Tag: Gigantopithecus

‘Were Giants Ever Real?’ (2020)

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Furahan Biology and Allied Matters: The anatomy of giants in 'Game of Thrones': did they get it right?

Are we talking “Only in the movies”?

I’m sitting here indoors, wearing shades, because I’ve just come home from the eye doctor’s and my pupils are uncomfortably dilated. But at least that’s now out of the way.

Were Giants Ever Real?

So… Did giants ever exist? I mean real  giants. Not some guy who’s five-feet-ten and has a loud voice. It’s very hard to find a culture with no traditions or folklore about giants. You could say it;s a thing that it’d be only natural to imagine, and then point out that we have no giants’ tombs or weapons or underwear.

I won’t say there were no giants. I won’t even say they were only metaphorical giants.

When I was a boy, Gigantopithecus  was pitched to us as an enormous prehistoric human. Since then he’s been demoted and is now just an enormous ape… almost too big to believe in, but there he is.

Maybe our ancestors never expected Big G to be demoted.

Did Climbit Change Kill Off Giant Apes?

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Couldn’t they get the little apes, like the one in the picture, to pick their fruit for them?

Let’s educate ourselves by watching TV news!

NBC News has reported on Chinese research that claims that the world’s giant apes, ten feet tall, went extinct because of Climate Change that had a fatal result: they “couldn’t reach their favorite fruits” (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/you-cant-make-this-up-nbc-news-claims/). Scientists know this creature as Gigantopithecus and say it went extinct some 300,000 years ago–again, due to Climate Change.

Whoa! Say what?? You mean cars, gas stoves, air conditioning, and toilet paper didn’t cause that Climbit Change disaster? Poor Gigantopithecus! If only they’d been smart enough to invent ladders!

Thousands and thousands of prehistoric species had to live with innumerable Climbit Change episodes, and many thousands of species, and whole groups of animals (like dinosaurs) have gone extinct without being pushed over the edge by us. Why, it’s enough to tempt you into believing climates change all the time, all throughout Earth’s history. And just maybe we can’t control it, no matter how much power is handed over to stupid and tyrannical governments.

(“But it must be true, I saw it on TV!”)

The Giant Ape

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See the source image

Hi, Mr. Nature here, with a really cool prehistoric creature that ought to get at least a cameo appearance in a Bell Mountain book. Maybe the next one.

Gigantopithecus (“Giant ape”) lived long ago in Southeast Asia. About a hundred years ago, some of its enormous teeth were discovered in Chinese drugstores, where they were sold to be ground up for medicine. To this day all we have of its remains are a bunch of teeth and some bits of jawbone, but the reconstruction is hopefully somewhere near the mark, because these pieces strongly resemble the corresponding pieces in modern great apes. Only much, much bigger! Scientists believe a full-grown Gigantopithecus probably stood ten feet tall. Shades of King Kong.

For a while it was believed those teeth once belonged to gigantic human beings, albeit of a primitive form. Well, that’s Evolution for you. But as Gertrude Stein might say, “A Gigantopithecus is a Gigantopithecus is a Gigantopithecus.” God doesn’t create living things that are on their way to becoming something else. They’re all right just as they are. And all we can say for certain is that there probably aren’t any more of them. Probably.

What must it have been like to see one of these coming your way down a path in the jungle? I don’t think you’d easily forget it!