A
period of gigantism confirmed
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Prof. Berger
compares a giant femur to a normal skeleton.
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by
Professor Lee Berger!
On
the internet you will find an interview with professor Lee
Berger
of South Africa. And not only does he talk about fossilized
bones of human giants - he even shows the interviewer one!
Professor
Lee Berger is a renowned paleoanthropologist from the University
of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has conducted
numerous expeditions as an explorer for National Geographic
and was winner of the Society's first Research and Exploration
Prize in 1997.
You will find the interview with Professor
Berger on the internet pages of The Naked Scientists - media-savvy
group of physicians and researchers from Cambridge University
in England. The interview was done in November 2007 by Dr
Chris Smith when they visited South Africa and could study
the collection of fossils at Witwatersrand University.
Period of gigantism
Professor Berger is first explaining that it is a myth that
ancient humans were tiny, and that when humans moved through
the period of 0.5 million to 300,000 years ago in Africa we
moved into a sort of mystery period where the few fossils
you find are incredibly intriguing:
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Professor
Lee Berger and Dr. Chris Smith
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Giant and
normal bone
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Inside of Africa they go through one of the most incredible
things that we've only just begun to realise. They go through
a period of giantism, he says.
Enormous
femur
To show what he means Professor Berger pulls an enormous femur,
the bit that forms the hip joint, out of a bag. Dr Chris Smith
almost gets a shock because as a doctor he knows how big they
normally are:
- That's huge! he exclaimes.
Professor Berger explains that it
is so big that they can't even calculate how big the individual
was but that it should be over 7 feet tall. Dr Smith is asking
if it could be a just an abnormality but Professor Berger
denies this because they have found a lot of them and everywhere
they find then they are enormous. Professor Berger explains
that they call them archaic Homo Sapiens but that some people
refer to them as Homo Heidelbergensis:
- These individuals are extraordinary, they
are giants, he says.
Tough
environment
| Homo heidelbergensis
- sometimes called Homo rhodesiensis - is an extinct
species of the genus Homo which lived in Africa, Europe
and western Asia from at least 600,000 years ago, and
may date back 1,300,000 years. It survived until about
200,000 to 250,000 years ago. Its brain was nearly as
large as that of a modern Homo sapiens. It is very likely
the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens (in Africa) and
the Neanderthals (in Europe), and perhaps also the Denisovans
(in Central Asia). Wikipedia
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Professor
Berger explains that the humans could have been through a
period of gigantism that lasted a couple of hundred thousand
years, and that the femur had belonged to an archaic human
that lived about 350,000-400,000 years ago. He believed the
reason was that South Africa at that time had a period when
there were larger amounts of grassland and there were lots
of giants adapting to that, like giant buffaloes with horns
three metres across. That the humans in that tough environment
seemingly were using their body size to enforce themselves
into what was a very dry and tough period.
Not
a hoax
It was just so incredible for me to learn that a renowned
paleoanthropologist in an interview openly is telling that
we humans have been though a period of gigantism. I could
hardly believe it was true because to say that there has been
giants on earth usually make you the laughing stock of your
friends. For an archaeologist this definitely could be a career
suicide!
I managed to find the email address of Professor
Berger, sent him a request to confirm the article - and crossed
my fingers that the whole interview not was just a hoax.
I must say I was surprised to receive a
reply, and what more: It was not a hoax! Professor Berger
wrote the following in his email to me: - Indeed the article
is real.
Where are the headlines?
So here we have it, folks; A brave professor claiming that
we have been through a period of gigantism and that he has
evidence to proof it.
Should this not be headlines in the newspapers all over the
word? So far I have not seen a word.
To
read the full interview- click here
To
see a video on Youtube showing what I believe is the same
bone as Berger is holding in the picture - click here
More
information on this femur might be what is found in the American
Journal of Physical Anthropology - click here
Research done on this femur - click here
From: Lee Berger
[mailto:Lee.Berger@wits.ac.za]
Sent: Friday, 1 April 2011 2:36 PM
To: Terje Dahl
Copy: Wilma Lawrence; churchy@duke.edu
Regarding: RE: Gigantism
Dear Mr. Dahl,
Indeed the article is real.
Someone to talk to in detail about these things would
be my colleague Prof. Steve Churchill of Duke University
who has worked extensively on body size in Middle
Pleistocene humans.
Regards,
Lee
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From: Steven Churchill Ph.D.
[mailto:churchy@duke.edu]
Sent: Friday, 1 April 2011 9:49 PM
To: Terje Dahl
Copy: Lee Berger
Regards: Re: Ancient humans and gigantism
Dear Terje,
Thanks very much for your message, and for your interest
in our work on body size in archaic humans. It does
appear that the Middle Pleistocene was perhaps the
acme for human body size, and that there was a bit
of a reduction with the origins of our species, Homo
sapiens. I'm not so sure about them being routinely
more than 7 feet tall. The estimation of mass and
stature from skeletal remains can be problematic,
but my efforts to do so suggest that in the African
Middle Pleistocene, the average adult male stature
was 182.5 cm (6'3") and the relatively lean mass
(maybe 10% body fat) averaged 91.2 kg (200.6 lbs).
This may not seem that large relative to a Yao Ming
or Shaquille O'Neal, but relative to populations of
modern humans in hunter-gatherer economies this is
quite large.
I have attached two articles that address this issue
- you might also look for an article by John Kapplemen
entitled "They might be giants" that appeared
as a commentary to the Ruff et al. 1997 paper.
All the best - Steve
Steven E. Churchill, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
Box 90383
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
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