GIANTS (OF. geant, jaiant, Fr. giant, from Gk. gigas, giant). Adult human beings over normal size. In each race of mankind there is a standard of average height for men and for women, and this rule extends to castes and crafts as well as to civic and urban populations. This shows how much more powerful the race has be come than the individual. Tall parents often have short children, and vice versa, but the breed is uniform. The following table will show the average stature of men among the so-called gigantic races: Between the Akkas, a dwarfish negro people in the forests of Central Africa (height, 53 inches), and the Scotch farmers of Galloway, there is a difference of 18 inches, and this dif ference is about the same as that between the average height of the whole human race and the tallest giants.
The question is still mooted among ethnolo gists whether these differences in racial stature are due to nature or to nurture. Doubtless both causes have always been at. work. It was be lieved among the ancients that the first men on the earth were tall and mighty, and that they degenerated both in vigor and longevity. In con trast with this is the attempt to prove that the first men were dwarfish, and that the modern races of short stature are only survivals of the first men living on the outskirts of civilization.
The term giant is applied also to abnormally tall individuals among the different peoples of the earth. Stories are common among the lower civilized peoples, as well as among savage tribes, to the effect that men have lived who measured 15 feet in height. Og, King of Bashan, is said in Deuteronomy (iii. 11) to have been the last of the giants. His bedstead of iron was 9 cubits, or between 11 and 13V. feet, in length. Pliny mentions the name of an Arabian giant who measured feet, and also speaks of two others who were 10 feet in stature. Allowance is to be made, as in all other cases, for the imagination of the narrator. The following list of men whose real height is well known shows that it is possible for individuals to go far beyond the aver age of the human species, which is 65 inches: It is conceded on the part of medical men who have studied the subject with great care that men of extraordinary stature have feeble viability. Giantism is often associated with aeromegaly (q.v.), but is most frequently produced by ex cessive growth. Bishop Berkeley's experiment is interesting in this connection, since the exces sive height of the man was due to special feed ing. Natural giants or dwarfs, however, are abnormal, accompanied with sterility and other weaknesses.
The word 'giant' does not always refer to per sons of tall stature or large size; but in mytholo gy and folk-lore the title is given to men of great strength, or speed, or prowess. It is these phys ical heroes that form the connecting link between the mythic world and the world of sense. It is only a short distance across a narrow boundary to the province of the Jotuns and Titans and other giants of the imagination. The Nephilim
and Goliaths of the Bible are only a little way from Fieracles and Typhoeus. The Cyclops Poly phemus has his legendary parallels among all peoples.
It has been suggested that the old-time and still existing belief that mankind has degenerat ed, the excavation of great fossil bones in the superficial layers of the earth's crust, the dis covery by explorers in the last four centuries of the taller races of the earth, whose height was exaggerated by the terrors of being in a strange country—all these combined to fix the belief in the real existence of gigantic races.
Giants in Greek mythology are variously con ceived, either as the sons of Geea, Earth (Hesiod), or as a wild race of aborigines of enormous stat ure and proportionate strength (Homer). But neither poet refers to that tremendous conflict between the giants and the gods which, though subsequent to the overthrow of the Titans by Zeus, was often confounded with it. Their mother Earth had made them proof against all weapons of the gods, and their final defeat was due to the prowess of a mortal, Heracles. They were struck down and buried under islands and mountains, especially volcanoes. The Enceladus and Typhoeus are associated with Etna. In the colossal sculptures of the altar at Pergamum, in Asia Minor, the greatest representation of the Gigantomachia in ancient times, the giants ap pear in various shapes, some human, some mon strous, snake-footed and winged.
The tradition about the Cyclops shows similar ly diverse forms. The earliest legend makes them three in number, sons of Heaven and Earth, belonging to the race of the Titans, and yet help ers of Zeus in his struggle against their family. Each of them had one round eye in the centre of his forehead, and this element appears to be constant in the changing phases of the myth. In the Odyssey, however, they are gigantic and law less shepherds living in Sicily, whose fertile soil produced for them of itself the fruits of the field. They were cannibals as well, and scoffers at Zeus. Polyphemus is described as the strongest among them, and loses his single eye in the encounter with Odysseus. Later they become the assistants of Vulcan at his forge under Etna, or on the Liparian Islands, and tradition ascribed to them the work, equally suitable to their great strength, of building the massive walls of .Argos, Tiryns, and Mycense.
Consult: Taruffi, Della macro§omict (Milan, 1879) ; Bollinger, Heber und Riesen wuchs (Berlin, 1884) ; Weinhold, Die Riesen der germanischen Mythus (Vienna, 1858) ; Meyer, Die Giganten und Titanen in der antiken Sage und Kunst (Berlin, 1887). See further bibliog raphy in the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon General's Library (Washington), under "Dwarfs and Giants"; Tylor, Early History of Mankind (London, 1878) ; id., Primitive Culture (lb., 1891).