In the first episode of the new season of Mythology, host Alex Blumberg sits down with the legendary archaeologist Carl Sagan to discuss some of the strangest things he s found over the past century, including the discovery of giant bones found in the remains of ancient humanoids.
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00:08:10.240And I remember interviewing him in a coffee shop in Puno, and I asked him, are there any references to giants in the historical records of Peru?
00:08:38.280Okay, so I go back to my hotel, and the next morning we're getting ready to leave and head out to film something.
00:08:45.320And he comes walking into the hotel, and he's got a big smile on his face, and he said, you know, you got me wondering about this question of whether or not there's accounts of giants in the historical record.
00:08:57.280So I went into the record, into the digital files, and I did a search just to see.
00:09:03.420And he said, I can't believe how many accounts there are of giants in the historical record.
00:09:10.460He said, this is just a sample of them.
00:09:12.740I quickly highlighted some for you, and he gave me a CD.
00:09:15.920And when I looked at the CD, it was all these different chroniclers from different periods, from the days of the immediately following the conquest in the 1530s, all the way up to like the 1600s.
00:09:30.280And he had gone in and highlighted, and this was not all of them.
00:09:36.160This was just the ones that he quickly went in and found for me because he was curious.
00:09:40.260And there were dozens of references to the bones of giants that were discovered all over Peru.
00:09:47.840And we're not talking about giant sloths.
00:09:50.000We're not talking about dinosaur bones.
00:09:51.740We are clearly talking about humanoids.
00:10:07.440In one case, a specific example, I believe this comes from the records, and I could be wrong about this, from a priest named Arriaga.
00:10:12.440I could be wrong about, there was a bunch of different guys who wrote in the aftermath of the conquest whose works, that's the historical documentation from which we derive the history of the conquest of Peru.
00:10:28.580And in this particular case, after the Spaniards conquered Peru, in the wake of that conquest came two groups.
00:10:38.900You had the representatives of the Church of Rome, the priests, and then you had, coming with them, you had the representatives of the Spanish crown.
00:12:00.440And so in this program of extirpation of idolatry, they would identify what's being worshipped.
00:12:05.480And then they would destroy it, right?
00:12:08.020The priests and the visitadores are there because they're also collecting artifacts of gold and silver or whatever else.
00:12:13.540And they are meticulously recording these events.
00:12:17.120And in one case, they walked into a village.
00:12:19.680And it's usually like an idol that they burn or an altar, like I said, that they'll destroy.
00:12:24.340But in this one particular case, they walk into a village and they inquire of the villagers, of the indigenous people, what their huaca was.
00:12:33.960What are they, where are their gods that they're worshipping?
00:12:36.320And because they didn't see any altar and there was no indication of what they were worshipping.
00:12:41.840And the natives told them that their huaca or their idols were in the cave, were in a cave.
00:12:49.620So the Spanish, the priest and the visitadores, the representatives of the crown, they went into the cave.
00:13:02.400And they record that, the priest specifically records that when they went into the cave, the first thing they encountered was, and this are his words, dead Gentiles laying on the ground.
00:13:13.980And they surmised that they had been sacrificed.
00:13:21.160They find that the villagers were worshipping three gigantic corpses that had been seated.
00:13:32.260Like they're in a sitting, they're seated in a sitting position and they're dressed in cumbia.
00:13:38.120And cumbia is like the traditional garb of the indigenous people.
00:13:41.500And I don't remember if it was Arriaga, but it was one of the, the priest records that the bodies were six times the size of a normal man.
00:13:53.420And they had the bodies removed from the cave and burned in the village.
00:13:58.600That's right out of the, the same documents that we derive the history of the conquest of Peru.
00:14:05.280And that's just one of dozens of examples of the, of the bodies of giants being discovered in Peru post-conquest.
00:14:12.220And the same can be said, and it's, it's very reminiscent of what was happening here in the United States with the Smithsonian and some of the, now, now some of that under, and I think we need to make a note here that, that some of the accounts of giants being discovered in the mounds, maybe even the majority of the accounts were sensationalized.
00:14:31.460Because back in the, you know, back, back at the turn of the century here in America, obviously the newspapers, there's a lot of competition.
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00:17:29.120And I'm traveling all around Sardinia interviewing people, and I am hearing contemporary stories from people who have themselves dug up the bones of giants.
00:17:41.400And, of course, the skeptics will say, no, no, no, no, they were digging up mastodons and giant sloths and so forth.
00:17:48.280There was a time in Sardinia when they were engaging in a process of industrialization, and they were updating their roads, and they were digging out foundations for buildings.
00:17:59.660And I think this began sometime around the 40s, and it continued for a few decades, and people were beginning to use mechanized forms of agriculture.
00:18:09.900So, rather than the horse and plow, they were now getting tractors and digging deeper into their soil.
00:18:14.900And during this period of time, it was not uncommon for the people out there digging up their fields to, in the process of doing that, to unearth the bones of giants.
00:18:32.520These were the old-timers I was talking to, so a lot of these people have probably since passed away.
00:18:37.060One of the guys I talked to was like 101 years old, telling me stories like this.
00:18:42.480And I talked to dozens of people in Sardinia.
00:18:44.880And they would dig up these bones, and when they would dig up, let's say they're plowing, they're filled with a tractor, they dig up skeletal remains, unusually large skeletal remains.
00:19:03.200Because oftentimes the hands had rings, the fingers had rings, golden rings or silver or precious jewels, and they wanted to take the rings.
00:19:29.120Last time I checked, dinosaurs don't wear jewelry.
00:19:31.920And they would often find pendants around the neck, bracelets, and they would keep it quiet, obviously, because they didn't want the people from the university to come and take the artifacts that they had discovered.
00:19:45.520I love the idea, not to make too much light of this, but it's very interesting, and I buy this.
00:19:51.700I was a little more skeptical on the green men, but I buy this stuff.
00:19:56.080But I love the idea that the Sardinian giants, the Italian giants, unlike the Peruvian ones or whatever, the North American ones, they just look like my grandpa, basically.
00:20:06.640They've got, like, gold jeans and bracelets and stuff, you know.
00:20:09.640Yeah, and it was, I heard so many stories, so many stories.
00:24:45.500They laid three skeletons out, 9 feet tall each, and the next morning they were gone.
00:24:49.200So both of these individuals, again, not working contemporaneously, working one in the late 90s or one in the late 80s and the other in the early 90s at the same site.
00:25:01.140And they discovered, they unearthed gigantic chalices, gigantic plates.
00:25:06.660The one individual told me that they were trying to open, that they were excavating a tower, one of these, the remains of a Nuraghi tower.
00:25:26.960And they went inside, and he said that when they walked inside with their flashlights or crawled inside, they were confronted with this gigantic humanoid sitting at a table.
00:26:17.040And he even told me one time, one of these particular individuals told me that they were running out of room to put the artifacts because they were told strictly to put all of the artifacts in the church, except for in that case with those bodies.
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00:28:52.020They also happen to be one of the strongest advocates for the Second Amendment in the industry.