Skeleton of nearly 7 foot Giant Roman Found

As I understand it, people back in those times were considerably shorter...so a height of nearly 7 feet would be described as a giant.

That's just my two cents.

Off topic:
Ironically it cost the govt. 6 cents to produce my two cents.

I guess the jokes on us in the end.

Yeah, 7 feet tall would be a giant.

The article says a typical Roman man was 5 feet 6 inches. So 7 feet is fully a third larger than a normal man, that would be chest and shoulders above normal.

A true Goliath. And if the have found fossil bones of men as tall as 10 feet, then we can safely say giants of mythological proportions did indeed exist in the past.

Maybe they were one in a million, or maybe they were as common as basketball players are today.

There was more genetic variability in the past, people would intermarry to keep certain traits in certain regions. Makes sense that tribes of Goliaths would be encountered by the Romans.

They wrote of fighting giants over 7 feet tall among the Gauls, and Celtics. And their Emperor Maximinus was said to be 8 feet 6 inches tall and used his wife's bracelet as a ring.

There have been immensely strong human giants even in recent centuries. Angus MacAskill, a 7 foot 9 inch, 460 lbs Nova Scotian giant could lift a 2,200 lb anchor off the dock and carry it a ways. He could lift a 40 foot pole into the ground as easy as a farmer drives a 10 -12 foot fence pole. The guy had hands 12 inches long and 8 inches wide, and boots 17 inches long. Lived to age 46, and his growth was all natural, not some abnormality. Imagine encountering a tribe of giants his size and strength. News paper accounts going back fifty, to a hundred years ago are littered with reports of 7 to 9 foot giant's bones found all over the Ohio and Mississippi river valley burial mounds. If National Geographic could report on what the Smithsonian is hiding in their vaults, then maybe we could get some real disclosure on a long covered up and denied reality in our human history.

Your thread title is misleading. The giant body has nothing at all to do with Romans.

But interesting nevertheless.

How is the title misleading?

The skeleton of a man nearly 7 feet tall was found near Rome, and dates to the 200's A.D.

It has everything to do with the Romans.

Romans aren't 7 feet tall. Therefor it is not a roman. It is something else. Like the 7 foot bodies found all over the world. They aren't Romans either.

My guess, without reading it yet, he was a Celt or German

Yes probably. May have been Italian also, like the Lombards who had a king "Rodchis" who was about 8 feet tall.

They had whole armies of 6 1/2 to 7 foot+ men, and the Romans men were only barely 5 foot 6 in.

This is what a mere 6 foot 8 inch strong man would look like to the average Roman: [link to www.ringsideboxingshow.com]

Primo Carnera was a famous heavy weight Italian boxer, 6'7 or 6 '8 and 270 lbs.

Imagine fighting a force of 5,000 men like that. No guns, just swords and spears.

...amazing how they can find 1 human remain and cant account for millions more that supposed to have lived at the same time...its the old,hey look at the tree so you wont see the forest trick again..

Last Edited by T Ceti H.C. Radnarg on 11/10/2012 03:14 AM

Very interesting, but, someone 7 feet tall wouldn't by any means be a giant. Check out some pictures of sultan kösen standing next to other people, you can kind of get an idea of how someone that tall would be. He is 8 feet tall if I remember right.

Very tall yes, giant not even close. =) Show me proof of a 12+ foot tall person and we'll talk.

That's exactly the point. Seven feet tall is merely a very tall person to a 6 ft 3 inch modern man, but compared to an Average Roman man or ancient Greek or Hebrew men who were averaging 5 ft 5 or 5 ft 6, they would call him a giant. Their heads would be level with his chest, so basically the same height difference between a 9 or 10 year old boy and a full grown man.

So the general rule of thumb, is if a giant was 7 feet tall he would have appeared more like 8 feet tall in modern terms, and an 8 foot man would have appeared like 9 feet tall.

Humans have grown as tall as 9 feet. Little evidence of over 12 feet exists, but there is proof that some giants were estimated at between 9 and 12 feet -- one was estimated at over 11 feet. The giant of Castelnau, the bone measurements are given in a scientific paper, and the height estimate and photo of the bones is included. It's all in French if you can read French.

So 7 to about 12 feet seems to be the range of what a possible human giant could grow. However, if they were built like a giant Gorilla, then maybe a 15 footer could exist. Gigantopithecus was a giant ape which was fully twice as tall as modern man when he stood up on two legs. The real King Kong. Estimates range from 9 1/2 to over 12 feet tall for Giganto. A recent skull cast was made by one independent scientist which suggests the largest male giganto may have been 25% larger than the average 10-11 foot males, or roughly 13+ ft and well over 2,000 lbs.

So giants did exist.populations of Heidelberg, Rhodesian and Meganthropus hominids routinely exceeded 6 and 7 feet. Some may have grown to 8 and 9 feet based on early estimates of Meganthropus jaw.

The Giganto skull estimates, based on huge (inch + wide teeth) and massive jaws twice as wide as modern humans.

[link to frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com]

These Giganto would have had heads the size of a Buffalo. the skulls would have been from 15 to 20 inches tall, jaw to crown, without some extra inches of flesh.

Imagine, a head that big!!!! a normal human head weighs like 10 - 15 lbs, so imagine a head as big as giganto would weigh 8 times more if it is 2 x 2 x 2 in all dimension..


A 100 lb head. Damn.