by Terrence Aym

Created on: November 17, 2009

"On the earth there once were giants." - Greek poet Homer, 400 B.C.E.

Few Americans alive today are aware that once real giants roamed this land - giant red-haired humans. Most Americans believe that the Native Americans were the first to inhabit the North American continent. Yet there were others - a much more ancient race that walked the hills and valleys, the plains and deserts of the pre-Colombian Americas.

Evidence of giant humans - people seven to twelve feet tall - exists in the fossil records, tools and other artifacts recovered from archaeological digs. Giant skeletal remains have awed and sometimes frightened researchers and explorers as far back as the Sixteenth Century.

Some present day Native American tribes still recite the legends of the giants and how their ancestors fought wars against them when they arrived in North America 15,000 years ago only to find the giants already here. Others, like the Aztecs and Mayans recorded their encounters with a race of giants to the north when they ventured out on exploratory expeditions.

European explorers meet living giants

The earliest Western explorers who wrote about the giants of North America included Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, Spanish explorer Desoto, and Commodore Byron the grandfather of the famous poet, Lord Byron.

Not all encounters with giants were post-mortems. A well-documented sighting by Magellan occurred in 1520 near the harbor of San Julian, Mexico. There, Magellan and his crew came upon a red-haired giant that stood nearly ten feet tall and whom Magellan described as having a "voice like a bull." Later, Magellan learned from normal-sized natives that the giant belonged to a neighboring tribe. Remarkably, Magellan's logs show that he and his crew captured two of these living giants and brought them aboard his ship intending to bring them back to Europe. Unfortunately the giants grew ill and they both died during the return voyage. Magellan had their remains buried at sea.

Fifty-eight years later giants still roamed San Julian. None other than Sir Francis Drake recorded encountering several red-haired men who stood over nine feet tall. In the years that followed many more explorers and seafarers also reported seeing giants roaming that area.

Two lesser known explorers, Jacob le Maire and Wilhelm Schouten, discovered an intact skeleton of a pair of nine-foot humans. They each entered meticulous descriptions of the skeletons in their journals.

If a race of mostly red-haired giants dwelled in the

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