People have been sharing stories about giants for thousands of years, from the Cyclops of Greek mythology to the biblical Goliath. But are these just tales, or did giant men really walk this Earth?
If you consider a man nearly 9 feet tall to be a giant, then yes. Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in history, grew to 8 feet, 11 inches (2.72 meters) before he died at age 22 in 1940, according to Guinness World Records.
Wadlow was well above the current Average male height in the US of about 5 feet, 9 inches (1.75 m) and even taller than some interpretations of biblical descriptions of Goliath. There was nothing magical about Wadlow, though. As with most giants in real life, his height is the result of a medical condition.
“The greater part of [giant] patients have a growth hormone problem,” Marta Korbonitz, professor of endocrinology at Queen Mary University of London, told Live Science. “Robert Wadlow had that.”
Korbonitz noted that the leading cause of gigantism is increased levels of growth hormone produced by the pituitary gland in the brain. Most of the time, these high levels are caused by a benign tumor. One reason we’re unlikely to see another man of Wadlow’s height again is that doctors can now remove the tumor and use drugs to stop growth, as gigantism and tumor endanger the health of the person.
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Other conditions can cause people to be extremely tall. These include Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes bones to grow longer, Korbonitz explained.
However, some people grow to extreme heights without a known medical condition; they include the former tallest man in the world, Bao Xishun, who is 7 feet 9 inches (2.36 m) tall—a giant without gigantism. They likely have a set of genetic variants that predispose them to tall stature, Korbonitz said.
Although it is easier for researchers to study giants living in modern times, extremely tall people have probably always been around. The the oldest known case of gigantism comes from the supposed remains of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who was about 6 feet, 1.6 inches (1.87 m), while Korbonitz research has found that many of the real life Irish giants inherited a gene mutation from a person who lived 2,500 years ago.
“For as long as humanity has existed, we’ve had these diseases, so there’s no reason you wouldn’t have had these giants in Ancient Egypt or at any other time in human history,” Korbonitz said.
Genetics combine with environmental factors, such as diet at an early age, to determine the height, with the population often increasing over time as civilization advances. However, this is not always a linear trend.
Pavel Grasgrubera researcher at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, told Live Science that some male skeletons from the late phase of the mammoth-hunting Gravettian culture, about 29,000 years ago, stood out for their extraordinary height and even helped inspire myths of giants. The tallest of these seven skeletons, excavated in the Grimaldi cave system in Italy in the early 20th century, is appreciated be 6 feet, 5 inches (1.96 m) tall.
“Consider that at the time these skeletons were discovered, the standard for male height in Europe was under 170cm. [5 feet, 7 inches]!” Grasgruber said in an email. “No wonder these people must have looked like ‘giants’ to the scientists of the time.”
The researchers do not know if the tall remains were representative of the Graveto population. Still, Grasgruber notes that tall men were typical of early Upper Paleolithic populations in France and the historical region of Moravia (present-day Czech Republic), reaching heights that modern industrial nations did not reach until the mid-20th century.
“The reason for this good physical condition of early Upper Paleolithic hunters is the low population density and the abundance of game in the form of mammoths and other large mammals,” Grasgruber said.
