Sculpture of a large tyll and piret. Did giants live on Earth? What Turgenev saw

If you look at the Giant's Causeway from above, it really resembles a stone pavement and even a honeycomb.

As soon as this area is not called Northern Ireland! The Giant's Causeway, Causeway of Giants, Giant's Causeway. This place amazes not only with its size, but also with its mysterious legend of origin. According to an Irish legend, once upon a time the warrior Finn MacKumalo was going to fight the giant Hall, who lived overseas. Finn decided to build a bridge across it to get to Hall's house. He hewed out stone columns and drove them into the seabed with a sword. When Finn was tired, he lay down to rest and fell asleep. At this time the giant himself came to him.

But Finn's wife was cunning. She passed off her sleeping husband as her son. She told Hall that she was waiting for her husband and began to treat the giant to cakes with iron pans baked in them. When Finn woke up, his wife also gave him scones, but without the pans. Hall became frightened when he saw how quickly the child ate them. He imagined how huge his father must be and started running. The bridge could not bear the weight of the giant and broke.

But that was the legend. And from a scientific point of view, the origin of the Giant’s Causeway can be explained as follows. About 60 million years ago, eruptions occurred in this area. powerful volcanoes. They raised columns of ash into the sky and threw boiling magma onto the surface of the earth. As the magma cooled, it turned into lava. Columns are vertical cracks formed when lava solidified. Moreover, the slower the magma cooled, the higher the columns turned out.

Today the Giant's Causeway area is National Nature Reserve Northern Ireland and a UNESCO heritage site. The columns here reach a height of 6-12 meters, and their length is 275 meters. Researchers have counted about 40,000 of these pillars that enter the waters Atlantic Ocean at 150 meters. The diameter of the columns is on average 30-50 centimeters. They have smooth tops and several faces, which have from 4 to 9 corners. The edges were also formed as a result of natural geodetic processes.

If you look at the Giant's Causeway from above, it really resembles a stone pavement and even a honeycomb. All columns are dark in color and incredibly hard. This is explained by the fact that the pillars consist of basalt rich in magnesium and iron, which contains a small amount of quartz. This composition helps the columns to successfully withstand the destructive effects of winds and stormy waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Giant's Causeway consists of three sites. The first is the Great Trail. In this area there are the tallest columns, originating from rocky mountains. They resemble a cluster of huge stone steps. Closer to the water, the steps level out and form stone road, the width of which is 20 - 30 meters. The second site is the Middle and Small trails. They are located along the Great Path and are shaped like mounds. Moreover, each column has a flat top, which makes it possible to carefully move from one pillar to another.

The third site with a column is already located on the island of Staffa at a distance of 130 meters from the main shore and is a continuation of the unique formations. The island is home to a huge Fingal's Cave. Its height reaches 30 meters and length - 75 meters. The cave has indescribably beautiful acoustics. The waves crashing against the shore of the island create magical music in its hall, which is why Fingal’s Cave is also called “Singing Cave.” By the way, the Isle of Staffa is already considered Scottish territory.

Arnold Genrikhovich Neggo

Island of Giants (with illustration)

Chapter 1. THE MAN IN THE BLUE SOUTHWEST

A man in a blue sou'wester appeared in Tormiküla. People didn’t know who he was, where he came from, or why he came. Old Pill's motorboat disappeared at night. The chain was pulled out right with the stake. A person who can turn a stake out of the ground welded together by frost must have terrible strength. The broken boat was found on the shore of the bay, a kilometer from Pill’s estate. The crumpled, mangled engine was thrown, for some unknown reason, onto the top of a cliff sticking out by the sea.

The cow of Vyalya Madis fell ill. Maret, Madis's wife, had clearly seen before how a man in a blue sou'wester, lopsided and swaying awkwardly from side to side, was staggering near the farm. Noticing the fisherman, he quickly disappeared into the forest. And at the cowshed, prints of other people's boots were looping in the snow.

Madis himself, getting up in the morning to talk with his son-in-law Endel about blacksmithing, met this man on the deserted shore near the Humming Stone. The unknown man knelt in the snow and prayed. He still wears the same eye-catching southwester and a short sheepskin coat with the fur turned outward, looking like the skin of a bald bear. And there is something bearish in the figure itself...

“What a miracle!” Madis said to himself, peering with curiosity at the frantically praying man. “He’s overgrown with hair, his eyes can’t be distinguished, and his muzzle is colored blue. Like a drowned man, the devil is his brother!”

He came closer. The unknown man became ruffled and nervous, but remained in place, only more hastily shaking the fiery whisk of his beard, saying an incomprehensible prayer.

When asked who it was, he jumped up with incomprehensible agility, muttered something and suddenly began dancing and performing various tricks. The fisherman, without thinking for a long time, grabbed the dancer by the lapel of his fur coat and tried to calm him down - and then something incomprehensible happened: the giant Madis had more than enough strength, enough for four hefty men, but the stranger also had an iron hand, as if he had taken a hammer. Madis didn’t even have time to be surprised when he darted like an eel, leaving a large piece of fur in his hand.

The man in the blue sou'wester was also met by other fishermen. Usually at the hours when a pale dawn began to smoke over the blackened cold sea. Hunched over, waving his long, knee-length arms, he, like a wounded bird, jumped and danced on the shore, avoiding people and distrustful farm dogs. An alarming rumor ran along the winding paths of Tormikül.

They said that a madman came from the forest. You never know how many criminals were hiding in the Tormiküla forests after the war. Only severe frost and hunger could drive them, wild, completely exhausted, to human habitation, to warmth, to people.

The old women dubbed the newcomer “Swede” and talked all sorts of nonsense about it. They remembered the incident. Last fall, border patrol vessels detained an unusual-looking high-speed speedboat off Cape White Rocks, specially adapted for sailing off the shallow shores of the island. They've been hunting for him for a long time. They knew that someone crosses on black stormy nights sea ​​border. It was not possible to establish whether it was a Swede, or a local resident, an islander - when the border guards approached, the intruder jumped into the sea. The glider turned out to be of Swedish origin.

Great was the surprise of the glorious men of Tormikül when they learned that the madman in the blue sou'wester spent whole days disappearing in the neighboring Kiviranna church and that Pastor Willem favored him for his diligent service to God.

New astounding news was brought by the omnipresent Vyalya Maret, a kind, simple-minded woman, distinguished not only by her enormous height, but also by her excessive curiosity.

A few kilometers from Tormiküla, in the coastal pine forest, near Ludwig Bay, the Meltsi farmstead is buried in the snow. Small, slanting windows and black ribs of half-decayed logs had an ominous appearance. There was a bad reputation about this farm. Its former owner, fisherman Surnaste, hanged himself in his house when the Nazis drove his son Gustav to the Russian front.

After the Germans left, the bandits set up a bunker on the Meltsi farm. It was said that an elusive gang of “timber wolves” was hiding here with their famous leader, Scary Kurt, so nicknamed by the people for his unheard-of cruelty.

In Tormiküla they knew for certain that Gustav Surnaste, who served in the Estonian SS Legion, joined Kurt’s gang during the offensive of the Soviet troops and became his fifth adjutant.

One day, returning through the forest from her friend, Vyaliskaya Maret came to these places. In one of the windows of the Meltsi farm, she saw a strip of light breaking through the shutters. The evening was late. Not a soul around. However, curiosity prevailed over fear. Stumbling and hiccupping from excitement, Maret carefully reached the illuminated window and... almost sat down in amazement. A fisherman saw a man in a blue sou'wester! He stood with a knife in the middle of the room and, as Maret claimed, skinned alive a cat suspended from the ceiling. Not a hare, but a cat. Maret swore that she saw a long tail on the unfortunate victim, which, as you know, is not observed in hares. The fishermen laughed, and in the evening - it was Sunday - an event occurred that made them seriously alarmed. The discovery this time belonged to a boy from the Peetri farm, the son of the widow Teresa Tammeorg - Ilmar.

Late in the evening, mother and son were sitting in the upper room. Teresa knitted, furtively admiring her son’s courageous face and his tall, strong figure beyond his years. Ilmar, having recently returned from hunting, was diligently cleaning his father’s gun.

As on previous evenings, he told his mother about school, about the news from Mainland who got to school earlier than to distant fishing villages.

Grandfather's kerosene lamp shone dimly in the upper room, and the silver arrows of the knitting needles flickered dimly in Teresa's thoughtful hands. Close by, behind the wall of the house, the waves rushed onto the shore with a dull, grumbling splash. Somewhere nearby, iron clanged dully. Teresa thought she heard a barn door rattle. A large Finnish husky, dozing in the hallway, suddenly growled angrily. Someone's cautious steps were heard outside the window. The fisherman mechanically pulled back the window curtain and froze. She saw a man in a blue sou'wester, who hurried past the window with some kind of burden.

The madman noticed Teresa. For a short fraction of a minute they looked at each other point-blank. When the fisherman woke up, there was no one behind the black glass.

What are you doing, mom?

There... - Gasping, she could not answer.

A door slammed in the hallway. It was Poita who ran out. The barking of a dog and the scream of a man were heard at the same time. Trembling all over, Teresa hugged her son to her:

There's a madman there!..

The Peetri farm is located on the outskirts. Vyalisky Madis lives half a kilometer from here. Another neighbor, the rich, unsociable captain Karm, nicknamed the Black Captain by the Pomeranians, lives closer. His two-story mansion with tightly boarded shutters is hidden in a dense spruce forest at the foot of the Black Mountain. But Captain Karm rarely leaves his house even during the day.

Thoughts, one more alarming than the other, flashed through Teresa’s head.

A frenzied bark and rude abuse burst through the open door of the hallway, drowning out the noise of the sea. There was a struggle between the dog and the man.

Breaking free from his mother’s arms, Ilmar grabbed a lantern and ran out of the house.

A cold gust of wind showered him with water dust. In the blinding darkness, he did not immediately discern what had happened.

In the yard at the gate of the farm, a husky tore at a desperately struggling man.

Sing! Sing! Get away, you damned one! - Guttural cries were heard.

Forty Meter Adam

Giant enthusiasts, among whom there are many very serious scientists, first of all refer to countless myths. Naturally, it is difficult to find a people who would not have written legends about giants - just listing their national names would take up an entire book page.

What are myths? Here are lines from the Bible: “At that time there were giants on the earth, especially from the time when the sons of God began to come in to the daughters of men and they began to give birth...”

Elsewhere in the Bible, the “report” of the scouts sent by Moses to Palestine is given: “... There we saw giants... from a giant family; and we were... before them like locusts..."

Calculations show: a common person would seem like a locust to a giant more than 50 meters tall.

The Koran was also noted. Regarding the giants, it says that they were “higher than the tallest palm trees.” And they laughed at Noah, who began to build an ark to escape the impending flood. They said: “The flood will not harm us. We are too tall..."

And strangely enough, such revelations were believed, for example, by Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist and creator of a system for classifying flora and fauna. Somehow he figured out that Adam was 40 meters tall. And Eva was 35 meters tall.

The mighty Lebanese tilers

Another argument is the strange cyclopean buildings. And the most amazing of them is the Baalbek Terrace in Lebanon, located about a hundred kilometers from Beirut. At its base, archaeologists discovered monolithic stone blocks measuring 21x5x4 meters. Some weigh thousands of tons. And they are fitted so neatly that it is difficult to even insert a needle between the edges. Who else but the giant tilers was able to lay them?

A brigade of giants may have participated in the construction of the Egyptian and Mexican pyramids, Stonehenge and the Colossus of Rhodes, and installed huge stone idols on the shore of Easter Island.

And in free time the giants played with marbles. These "toys" - giant stone spheres called "Las Bolas Grandes" - are scattered throughout the Costa Rican jungle ( Central America). There are some that weigh 16 tons and reach a diameter of 2.5 meters.

What Turgenev saw

“The bodies were huge, and the faces were so different from ordinary human faces that it was amazing to see them, and scary to hear them speak,” - this is how the real historian Josephus describes the giants, not the mythical one, but the real one. His colleague Pausanias, who lived in the 2nd century, says that a well-preserved human skeleton more than 5 meters tall was discovered in Syria.

Ibn Fadlan, an Arab traveler who lived a thousand years ago, allegedly saw a 6-meter skeleton, which was shown to him by the subjects of the Khazar king. A skeleton of the same size, while in Switzerland in the museum of the city of Lucerne, was seen by the Russian classical writers Turgenev and Korolenko. They were told that these huge bones were discovered in 1577 in a mountain cave by the doctor Felix Platner.

Russian chronicles say that in the battle on the Kulikovo Field, the nomads fielded a giant 4 meters tall. But a group of our heroes led by Oslyabya defeated him. Perhaps then - 626 years ago - the last of the giants died.

Only the four- or six-meter giants were not the most gigantic. While conquering America, the Spaniards allegedly discovered a skeleton 20 meters tall in one of the Aztec temples. And they sent it as a gift to the Pope. And a certain Whitney, who served as the chief archaeologist for the US government at the beginning of the 19th century, examined a skull with a diameter of 2 meters. He was found in one of the mines in Ohio. Such a “bowler” should have belonged to a person 50 meters tall. This is already the scale of the giants from among those who laughed at Noah before the flood.

TOLD!

“Yes, there were people in our time. Not like the current tribe. You are not the heroes.”

Mikhail Lermontov.

SKEPTIC'S OPINION

Teeth - and those from monkeys

Baalbek is not the best argument for the existence of giants, says anthropologist Andrei Grinevsky. - Yes, no one can yet explain how the 800-ton stone blocks were laid. But it is naive to assume that they were carried by 20-meter giants. With such growth, a maximum of six people can grab the monolith. Total more than 100 tons per brother. Don't lift it.

There are prints of huge feet, continues Andrei Viktorovich. - The most famous of them is located in South Africa. It was found by local farmer Stoffel Kötzi at the beginning of the last century. The “left foot print” is imprinted into the almost vertical wall to a depth of approximately 12 centimeters. Its length is 1 m 28 centimeters. They assure that it was “inherited” by a man about 10 meters tall. Came here hundreds of millions of years ago, when the rock was soft. Then it froze, turned into granite and stood upright due to geological processes.

In my opinion, the footprint only looks like a human one. But there are no undeniable signs. It could have been left behind by a stone that later fell out. And a dinosaur.

And the skulls? Skeletons? - I’m interested.

Giant human bones are not exhibited in any museum in the world, the scientist answers. - But enthusiasts led by historian Michael Baigent, author of the acclaimed book “Forbidden Archaeology,” blame representatives of traditional science for this. They say they hid unique finds on purpose. Out of harm's way. Because otherwise we would have to change our views on evolution, and on the entire history of mankind.

And yet there is something gigantic in museums - teeth. Almost human in appearance, but 6 times larger than ours. First discovered in 1935 by the Dutch paleontologist Koenigswald in... one of the pharmacies in Hong Kong. According to estimates, their owners should weigh 350 - 400 kilograms.

Many “giantists” still “show off” these teeth, attributing them to mythical giants - the predecessors of people. However, it is known that in 1956 in South China, in Guangxi province, archaeologists dug up three huge jaws with exactly the same teeth. And they determined that they belonged to apes - the so-called Gigantopithecus. Yes, these primates were huge - almost four-meter. Sort of like mini King Kongs. But not by people.

My conclusion: there is no real evidence of the former existence of giants. Just myths, dubious evidence and fraud.

BY THE WAY

Skulls with bucket

KP correspondent Andrei Moiseenko went to check the testimony of eyewitnesses who claimed that in one of the villages in the south of the Ulyanovsk region local residents they dig up the remains of three-meter-tall people and their bucket-sized skulls.

The only noteworthy discovery of our expedition was a skeleton and a skull from which a wooden stake was sticking out. The remains belonged to a man approximately 1 m 90 cm tall. Tall, but not a giant. It seems that eyewitnesses tend to exaggerate.

HELLO, UNCLE STEPA!

The giants are back

The famous French biologist Jean Rostand wrote in his book “Life” that in 1905 he saw the Russian giant Makhnov perform in Paris. He was 285 centimeters tall and weighed 182 kilograms. He had palms of 32 centimeters and feet of 51 centimeters.

Historians have established that Makhnov is a real person. Belarusian. His name was Fedor, he was born near Vitebsk. He had enormous strength - he lifted the village bathhouse around the corner. He died of a cold in 1912 and was buried in the town of Velikanov Khutor. It seems that Fedor was the tallest man on Earth.

The living giants today do not live up to Makhnov.

An anti-scientific hypothesis says that modern giants gain enormous height because their ancient giant genes have come to life.

In fact, doctors have long figured out the reasons. Supernatural growth is a consequence of the disease. The so-called gigantism (also known as acromegaly or hypersomatotropism). It is caused by disturbances in the functioning of the pituitary gland, usually from an adenoma. And this gland begins to produce excessive amounts of growth hormone - somatotropin. A characteristic sign of the disease is disproportionately long limbs.

There is probably not a single people whose myths do not include giants. They can be good or evil, perform feats and guard other people's treasures, fight with each other or stand guard native land... How can we explain the external similarity of such heroes - despite the fact that the peoples who created these legends are sometimes in no way connected with each other? Perhaps the legends passed down from mouth to mouth by residents of different parts of the Earth indicate that giants really existed?

They differed not only in size

But if there really were giants, after them there should have been not only myths and legends, but also traces of life activity: architectural structures or buried remains.
According to some scientists, evidence of the existence of giants comes from many megalithic objects found in different parts of the Earth. Even in our time, building them is extremely problematic, but tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, without lifting mechanisms, it was simply impossible!
In Lebanon, near Beirut, there is the famous Baalbek Terrace. Built into its base are three huge stone slabs, each of which weighs about 800 tons. The plates are identical and fit together in such a way that it is impossible to insert a knife blade between them. Researchers have calculated that installing one such stone block (its dimensions are 21x5x4 meters) would require the simultaneous efforts of at least 35 thousand people!
Who did this and why? Arabic handwritten treatises say that the structure was a temple of Jupiter, and it was erected by giant people on the orders of King Nimrod immediately after the Flood.
The ancient city of Teotihuacan, located 50 kilometers from Mexico City, is a whole complex of huge stone blocks. According to the most common historical version, the city was built by giants to turn people into gods. Its layout resembles a model of the solar system. From the central temple, which personifies the Sun, on the corresponding
There are temple planets in the distance, including Pluto, officially discovered in 1930! That is, already at that time the ancient inhabitants knew astronomy thoroughly.
The temples were built in the form of pyramids, comparable in size to Egyptian ones. It is known that the Aztecs found the city already abandoned; it was they who gave it the name Teotihuacan, which means “divine place.”
Scientists also include the Egyptian Sphinx, English Stonehenge, stone figures of Easter Island, and the Tibetan City of the Gods as objects that could have been erected by giants.
Not only the structures themselves are amazing, but also their geometric relationships with each other. For example, a mental line drawn from the Tibetan City of the Gods to the Egyptian Sphinx, passing further, leads to Easter Island. And the same line drawn from the City of the Gods to the Mexican pyramids also goes to Easter Island! These two lines outline one-fourth of the earth's surface, and a line drawn from the City of the Gods to Stonehenge divides such a quarter exactly in half.

Dinosaur hunter?

There are also references to huge people in historical documents. Herodotus writes that during military campaigns the Spartans carried with them the skeleton of the warrior Orestes, who was 3.5 meters tall.
The ancient Greek scientist Pausanias told how a human skeleton 5.5 meters high was found at the bottom of the Sront River.
The Roman historian Josephus described the testimonies of those who saw giants live. Eyewitnesses said that their faces were different from ordinary human ones, and their voices were thunderous.
In the era of early Christianity, priests believed that Adam was 4 meters tall and Eve was 3 meters tall. Records of this are available in the Vatican archives.
Manuscripts kept in Tibetan monasteries mention that during excavation work, monks found the bodies of men and women from 5 to 6 meters tall.
In a book by an unknown medieval author, entitled “History and Personality,” it is mentioned that in Cumberland (one of the counties of England) a four-meter-long skeleton in military armor was found, next to it were a sword and an ax of the appropriate size.
And, of course, great amount finds were made already in our time or close to ours.
In the 20th century, many four-meter skeletons were excavated in the Caucasus Mountains.
Their age is tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. The presence of such large number The remains allowed scientists to assume that it was here, after some global catastrophe, that the giants moved, seeking salvation - and here they found their last refuge.
Facts confirming the existence of giants include numerous fossilized huge footprints. For example, a fingerprint was discovered in Tanzania human foot 80 centimeters long. Similar, slightly smaller footprints (50 centimeters) were found in the Nevada desert and are at least 250 million years old.
In Turkmenistan, near the village of Khoja-pil-ata, a chain of five-toed footprints was discovered next to dinosaur tracks. The growth of the giant who left them reaches 5 meters; he lived 150 million years ago.
In 1935, a human tooth was found in Hong Kong, which was five times larger than the tooth of an ordinary person; in 1950, in Alaska, a skull 60 centimeters high with two rows of teeth was found; and in 1999, in Mongolia, a fossilized human skeleton about 15 meters long was found. .
Such facts suggest that giants once really existed. But whether they were a single people who settled throughout the Earth, or whether they belonged to different races is a question to which scientists have not yet given a definite answer.

Horse under your arm

In the territory modern Russia the remains of giants were discovered in Karelia and other habitats of Finno-Ugric peoples.
Their legends mention two tribes of giants - the Khiisi and the Adogites. As the Finno-Ugric settled in their current territories, the giants moved north. Moreover, this did not happen millions of years ago, but already in the Middle Ages. About the giants living in the north as historical fact wrote the Danish scholar Saxo Grammaticus (1140-1206).
Some representatives of the giant tribes came into contact with ordinary people - and even lived among them. The Arab historian Ibn Fadlan (10th century) writes that he came to Volga Bulgaria (the territory of modern Chuvashia) to look at the giant living here, but, unfortunately, he had already died. Ibn Fadlan describes that he was 12 cubits tall (about 6 meters) and had a head like a huge cauldron.
The testimony of another Arab, the scientist and traveler Abu Hamid al-Andalusi (11th century), has also been preserved. He also visited the places where the Finno-Ugric people lived - and met a living giant from the Adogit tribe. The scientist said that he could take a horse under his arm the same way an ordinary person takes a lamb.
Russian ethnographer Peter Theodor Schwindt in his book “Folk Traditions of the North-Western Ladoga Region”, published in late XIX century, writes that once upon a time huge people lived in these places, who were gradually displaced by the Laplanders. But there remains numerous evidence of the existence of giants: huge bones found in the ground, as well as some structures in the mountains and islands.

It's all the asteroid's fault

What does modern science say about giant people? Perhaps the most logical view is that the life and disappearance of giants are associated with cosmic cataclysms.
There is evidence that hundreds of millions of years ago a huge asteroid, whose dimensions exceeded the size of the Moon, approached our planet. It became a satellite of the Earth - and because of this, the force of gravity on the planet weakened significantly. It was then that giant people appeared who created an unusually developed civilization. And after hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, this satellite left orbit, exploded, and its debris fell to Earth. The people who survived the disaster as a result of mutation decreased in size - because the force of gravity on the planet increased sharply. In addition, the ozone layer of the atmosphere decreased seven times, which increased the negative impact of solar radiation, and the fewer people, the more smaller area its impact.
Researchers were able to prove that before the disaster, the earth’s atmosphere contained one and a half times more oxygen than it does now. This explains the existence of giant animals and plants characteristic of that time, which, of course, contributed to the life of giant people.
After the catastrophe, the size of the giants could decrease gradually. According to some famous anthropologists (K. Bohm, F. Weidenreich, etc.), before the explosion and fall of the satellite, the height of the asuras (residents of the legendary continent of Lemuria) reached 50 meters. After the disaster, the continent split, as a result of which parts of the once united people of giants found themselves isolated from each other. The Atlanteans who replaced the Asuras were approximately 18 meters tall, and the Boreans who replaced them were up to 6 meters tall. In accordance with the new living conditions, giants in some areas died out, while in others they managed to continue existing, at least until the 16th century.
Of course, such a theory goes against the teachings of Darwin - but it is the one that most plausibly explains the existence of giant people.


In the folklore of different peoples of the world you can find many stories about giants. As a rule, these were creatures of enormous size, possessing superhuman strength and extraordinary abilities. True, these characters were almost always destined for a tragic fate. The five most unusual mythical giants are discussed later in the review.

1. Atlas - the giant who holds up the sky



In Greek mythology, Atlas (Atlas) was one of the Titans who went to war against Zeus, the supreme ruler of Olympus. When the Titans lost, Zeus punished Atlas by forcing him to hold the firmament above the Earth forever.

According to the legends about the 12 labors of Hercules, the hero met Atlas. Hercules shouldered the sky so that the giant could rest from his heavy burden.

Another legend tells of Perseus encountering Atlas in North West Africa. The giant wanted to drive Perseus away, but he took out the severed head of Medusa the Gorgon in his bags. Seeing her, Atlas turned to stone, becoming a mountain range.

2. Hrungnir - a giant in stone armor


There are many legends about giants in the Scandinavian epic. The largest of them is Hrungnir. Once he competed in a race with the supreme god Odin, but lost. Then Hrungnir declared that he would kill all the gods of Asgard. He donned stone armor and took a whetstone as a weapon. His head and heart were also made of stone.

Thor came out to duel with the giant. The hero threw a hammer, which broke the whetstone and broke Hrungnir's head.

3. Biblical giant Goliath



According to the Bible, Goliath was a Philistine - a representative ancient people, who lived in the Middle East. The Old Testament describes a battle scene between a 2.77 meter tall giant, dressed in copper armor, and the Jewish youth David, armed only with a sling.





A well-thrown stone hit the giant, and he fell. David took his sword from the sheath of his defeated enemy and cut off his head.

4. One-Eyed Cyclops Polyphemus



Polyphemus is perhaps the most famous of the Cyclopes - the one-eyed giants in Greek mythology. According to Homer's Odyssey, Polyphemus was the son of Poseidon and the sea nymph Toosa. He lived on the island of Sicily with other Cyclopes, where he tended sheep.

When Odysseus and his crew landed on the island, they were captured. The cyclops locked people in a cave so that they could then eat everyone. But the cunning Odysseus found a way out here too. He gouged out the sleeping giant's only eye, and then, together with a herd of sheep, got out and fled from the island.

5. Hungry and sleepy demon Kumbhakarna



Kumbhakarna is a giant demon from the Hindu epic Ramayana. Kumbhakarna was not initially evil, but by his own mistake he asked Brahma not for a blessing, but for a long sleep. As a result, the giant slept for six months a year, and when he woke up, he ate everyone - both people and monkeys.

When an important battle began and Kumbhakarn's help was needed, only the trampling of a thousand elephants could wake him up. The giant opposed the army of Prince Rama, but was killed in battle.

Mythical giants are known only from the pages of ancient epics, unlike

 

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