Was there giants on earth
Executive summary
The short answer: there is no credible scientific evidence that the mythic, humanlike “giants”—people 20 feet tall or more—ever roamed Earth; tall figures in folklore, religious texts, and some extraordinary individual skeletons have fueled the idea, but biomechanics, paleontology and mainstream archaeology do not support literal, race‑scale giants [1][2][3]. At the same time, real phenomena—very tall individual humans, extinct large primates, misidentified fossils, and widespread cultural myths—explain why belief in giants persists [4][1][5].
1. The scientific bottom line: no evidence for race‑scale human giants
Contemporary science finds no verified human species or population that reached the gargantuan heights of myth; analyses of human and hominin fossils show no lineage approaching 20 feet, and experts point to physical constraints such as the square–cube law that make such body plans biologically implausible [1][2][3].
2. Where the stories come from: myth, scripture and cultural memory
Giants are a global cultural motif—Greek Titans, the Nephilim of Genesis, Norse Jötunn, and countless local traditions—which scholars trace to mythic, symbolic and historical processes rather than straightforward eyewitness history; ancient authors like Pliny and Herodotus reported giant finds, often conflating fossils or large animal bones with human remains [5][6][5].
3. Real bones, real mistakes: fossils and hoaxes that look like “proof”
Some famous episodes that fed belief in giants were misinterpretations or deliberate frauds: nineteenth‑century hoaxes such as the Cardiff Giant and disputed reports of oversized bones were widely publicized, and fragmentary or unusually large bones sometimes led antiquarians to exaggerate human stature before modern osteology could correct errors [7].
4. Tall people and extinct large cousins: seeds of the legend
Archaeology and medical science document exceptions—individuals with gigantism due to hormonal disorders and unusually tall skeletons from certain prehistoric human groups—that could inspire giant tales, and extinct large primates like Gigantopithecus may have stood up to around 10 feet in some reconstructions, contributing to collective imagination about very large humanoids [4][1].
5. The modern conspiracy industry vs. mainstream scholarship
A persistent modern current claims institutional cover‑ups (Smithsonian/Vatican conspiracies) or suppressed finds; mainstream institutions and scientists rebut these claims and point to lack of verifiable specimens, peer‑reviewed data, or reproducible dating as fatal weaknesses in those narratives [7][3].
6. Why people still ask—and what evidence would settle it
The question matters because it sits at the crossroads of folklore, identity, and scientific literacy: the ubiquity of giant myths, a handful of ambiguous finds, and understandable fascination with the spectacular feed one another; decisive evidence would require reliably dated, anatomically human skeletons demonstrably outside known human size ranges published and vetted in the scientific literature—nothing of that sort exists in mainstream records [6][4][7].
7. Bottom line with nuance
Giants as literal, species‑level, 20‑foot‑tall humans are not supported by credible science; yet the human record contains tall individuals, extinct large primates, misread fossils and richly repeated myths that together explain the persistent belief—so the statement “there were giants on Earth” is true in cultural and mythic terms but unsupported as a biological fact by current evidence [1][4][5].