How Tall can Humans Grow

A Twitter friend recently proposed a question:

Is this true? @EvolutionistXX @sciencebase (Not the biblical Goliath, obvs). https://t.co/X3wuuOhlbT

— Cmdr. Jonty👨🏼‍✈️ 🦞🦉🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@CmdrJonty) November 25, 2019

These skeletons can be divided into two groups: those for whom we have some historical evidence (eg, Goliath, famous literary villain), and those with no evidence except images like this one.

Incidentally, modern man does not average 6 feet tall. The average American man, hailing from a well-fed cohort, is only 5″9′ (you think men are taller than they are because they all lie). The global average is a bit smaller, at about 5’7“.

Historically, people tended to be a bit shorter, probably due to inconsistent food supplies.

I have often seen it claimed that heights fell when people adopted agriculture, but most hunter-gatherers aren’t especially tall. The Bushmen, for example, are short by modern standards; I suspect that the pre-agricultural human norm was more Bushman than Dinka.

If we roll back time to look at our pre-sapiens ancestors, Homo erectus skeletons are estimated to have been between 4″8′ and 6″1′, which puts them about as tall as we are, but with a lot of variation (we also have a lot of variation). Neanderthals are estimated about 5″4′-5″5′; Homo habilis was shorter, at a mere 4″ 3′. Lucy the Australophithecine, while female, was even shorter, similar to modern chimps.

On net, a few food-related hiccups aside, humans seem to have been evolving to be taller over the past few million years (but our male average still isn’t 6 feet.)

But does this mean humans couldn’t be taller?

The trouble with being unusually tall is that, unlike apatosauruses, we humans aren’t built for it. The tallest confirmed human was Robert Wadlow, at 8 feet, 11 inches. According to acromegalic gigantism specialist John Wass, quoted by The Guardian, it would be difficult for any human to surpass 9 feet for long:

First, high blood pressure in the legs, caused by the sheer volume of blood in the arteries, can burst blood vessels and cause varicose ulcers. An infection of just such an ulcer eventually killed Wadlow.

With modern antibiotics, ulcers are less of an issue now, and most people with acromegalic gigantism eventually die because of complications from heart problems. “Keeping the blood going round such an enormous circulation becomes a huge strain for the heart,” says Wass.

Ancient people, of course, did not have the benefit of antibiotics.

What about Bigfoot?

Well, Bigfoot isn’t real, but Gigantopithecus probably was.

Gigantopithecus … is an extinct genus of ape that existed from two million years to as recently as one hundred thousand years ago, at the same period as Homo erectus would have been dispersed,^[2] in what is now Vietnam, China and Indonesia placing Gigantopithecus in the same time frame and geographical location as several hominin species.^[3][4] The primate fossil record suggests that the species Gigantopithecus blacki were the largest known primate species that ever lived, standing up to 3 m (9.8 ft) and weighing as much as 540–600 kg (1,190–1,320 lb),^[2][5][6][7] although some argue that it is more likely that they were much smaller, at roughly 1.8–2 m (5.9–6.6 ft) in height and 180–300 kg (400–660 lb) in weight.^{[8][9][10][11]}

They’re related to orangutans; unfortunately it’s difficult to find their remains because the Chinese keep eating them:

Fossilized teeth and bones are often ground into powder and used in some branches of traditional Chinese medicine.^[13] Von Koenigswald named the theorized species Gigantopithecus.^[8]

Since then, relatively few fossils of Gigantopithecus have been recovered. Aside from the molars recovered in Chinese traditional medicine shops, Liucheng Cave in Liuzhou, China, has produced numerous Gigantopithecus blacki teeth, as well as several jawbones.^[14]

Please stop eating fossils. They’re not good for you.

Unfortunately, since we only have teeth and jawbones from this creature, it’s hard to tell exactly how tall it was.

Let’s just estimate, then, a maximum human height around 10 feet. After that, your heart explodes. (Joking. Sort of.)

Let’s start with Goliath.

The Philistines were a real people–one of the “Sea Peoples” who showed up in the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age Collapse:

 In 2016, a large Philistine cemetery was discovered near Ashkelon, containing more than 150 dead buried in oval-shaped graves. A 2019 genetic study found that, while all three Ashkelon populations derive most of their ancestry from the local Levantine gene pool, the early Iron Age population was genetically distinct due to a European-related admixture …According to the authors, the admixture was likely due to a “gene flow from a European-related gene pool” during the Bronze to Iron Age transition…^[9]  

The inscriptions at Medinet Habu consist of images depicting a coalition of Sea Peoples, among them the Peleset, who are said in the accompanying text to have been defeated by Ramesses III during his Year 8 campaign. In about 1175 BC, Egypt was threatened with a massive land and sea invasion by the “Sea Peoples,” a coalition of foreign enemies which included the Tjeker, the Shekelesh, the Deyen, the Weshesh, the Teresh, the Sherden, and the PRST. … A separate relief on one of the bases of the Osirid pillars with an accompanying hieroglyphic text clearly identifying the person depicted as a captive Peleset chief is of a bearded man without headdress.^[49] This has led to the interpretation that Ramesses III defeated the Sea Peoples including Philistines and settled their captives in fortresses in southern Canaan; another related theory suggests that Philistines invaded and settled the coastal plain for themselves.^[53] The soldiers were quite tall and clean shaven. They wore breastplates and short kilts, and their superior weapons included chariots drawn by two horses. They carried small shields and fought with straight swords and spears.^[54]

The name “Goliath” is a real Philistine name.

(More on the Bronze Age Collapse: 1177 BC: the Year Civilization Collapsed.)

So there is a decent chance that the Goliath recorded in the Bible was, in fact, a real person.

However, Goliath’s great height may just be… an exaggeration. According to Wikipedia: 

Goliath’s height increased over time: the oldest manuscripts, namely the Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel from the late 1st century BCE, the 1st-century CE historian Josephus, and the major Septuagint manuscripts, all give it as “four cubits and a span” (6 feet 9 inches or 2.06 metres)…

It looks like Goliath was tall, but only basketball player tall, not Guinness Book of World Records tall.

Maximinus Thrax:

The shortest guy in the picture, “Maximinus Thrax,” was a real person and emperor of Rome from 235 – 238 AD. 8″6′ is at least within the range of heights humans can achieve, and he was, according to the accounts we have, very tall. Unfortunately, we don’t know how tall he was–the ancient accounts are considered unreliable, the Roman “foot” is not the same as the modern “foot,” and crucially, no one has dug up his skeleton and measured it.

So Maximinus was probably a tall guy, though not 8″6′ (that would require the Roman foot to equal our modern foot).

Og the Rephaim:

Og, King of the Bashan, is only known from the Bible, but might have been an actual king. We don’t have any chronicles from other countries that mention him (kings often show up in such chronicles because they make war, get defeated, send tribute, sign treaties, etc., but there is one Agag of the Amelekites who does have a similar name.

Interestingly, there is one Og attested in archaeology, found in a funerary inscription which appears to say that if the deceased is disturbed, “the mighty Og will avenge me.”

The Bible claims that Og’s bed was 13 feet long. Wikipedia offers us an alternative explanation for this mysterious bed: a megalithic tomb:

It is noteworthy that the region north of the river Jabbok, or Bashan, “the land of Rephaim”, contains hundreds of megalithic stone tombs (dolmen) dating from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC. In 1918, Gustav Dalman discovered in the neighborhood of Amman, Jordan (Amman is built on the ancient city of Rabbah of Ammon) a noteworthy dolmen which matched the approximate dimensions of Og’s bed as described in the Bible. Such ancient rock burials are seldom seen west of the Jordan river, and the only other concentration of these megaliths are to be found in the hills of Judah in the vicinity of Hebron, where the giant sons of Anak were said to have lived (Numbers 13:33).^[2]

Og might have actually been a very tall person, though it is doubtful he was 13 feet tall. He might have been a fairly normal-sized person who had a very impressive megalithic tomb which came to be known as “Og’s Bed,” inspiring local legends. He also might not have existed at all. Until someone digs up Og’s body and measures it, we can’t say anything for sure.

French Giants

Interestingly, I found two French giants, though neither of them, as far as I know, near Valence.

Bones of the giant of Castelnau, plus a normal human humerus.

The Giant of Castlenau is known from three pieces of bone uncovered in 1890. If they are human, they are unusually large, but no research has been done on them since 1894 and even a crack team of Wikipedia editors has failed to uncover anything more recent on the subject.

I’d hold off judgment on these until someone within the past century actually seems them and confirms that they didn’t come from a cow.

Teutobochus, king of the Teutons, was a giant found in 1613, France. Unfortunately, he seems to have been a deinotherium–that is, an extinct variety of elephant.

This is the last of the reasonable skeletons. The rest exist only in graphics like the one at the top of the post and articles discussing them–in other words, there’s more evidence for Paul Bunyan.

So far I’ve found no sources on the 15 foot Turkish giant. Yes, lots of people claiming they exist, eg. No, not one photo of them.

Was a 19’6″ human skeleton found in 1577 A.D. under an overturned oak tree in the Canton of Lucerne? There are no records of it.

Any 23 foot tall skeletons near an unidentified river in Valence, France? Can’t find any.

And what about the 36 foot tall Carthaginian skeletons?

Apatosaurus dimensions

Giraffes, currently the tallest animals on earth, only reach 19 feet. T-rex was 12-20 feet tall. Even the famous Apatosaurus was a mere 30 feet tall (though we don’t know how high he could swing his head).

If you’re talking about humans who were bigger than an Apatosaurus, you’re really going to have to pause and take a biology check–and also check to make sure you aren’t holding an Apatosaurus femur.

Humans could be bigger (or smaller) than they currently are, just as dinosaurs came in many different sizes (some, like hummingbirds, are quite small), but different sizes require different anatomy. That’s why people with giganticism have heart trouble and tall people die younger: we aren’t built for it. Humans aren’t designed to handle Apatosaurus-level weights; our hearts aren’t designed to pump blood that far. A 36 foot tall human couldn’t be a single individual with giganticism, nor even a whole family or tribe of unusually tall people–they’d have to have evolved that way over millions of years. They’d be their own species, and we’d have actual evidence that their bones exist.

Incidentally, most of the sources I found discussing these skeletons, including ones using the graphic above, claim that evidence of these giants is being actively hidden or suppressed or destroyed by The Smithsonian, National Geographic, etc., because they would somehow disprove evolution by showing that humans have gotten shorter instead of taller.

This is absurd. Gigantopithecus is taller than any living ape (including humans) but he doesn’t disprove evolution. He doesn’t even disprove orangutans. A giant human skeleton would simply show that there was once a giant human–not that humans didn’t evolve.

Humans can evolve to be shorter–it has happened numerous times. Pygmies are living human people who are much shorter than average–adult male Pygmies average only 5 feet, one inch tall. Pygmoid peoples are just a little taller, and found in many parts of the world.

Even shorter, though, were Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis. The remains we have so far uncovered of H. floresiensis stood a mere 3 feet, 7 inches, and luzonensis was similarly petite. Both of these hominins descended from much taller ancestors.

Evolutionists don’t need to hide the existence of giant skeletons because evolution can’t be disproven by the existence of a tall (or short) skeleton. That’s just not how it works. The Smithsonian would love to display giant skeletons–if it had any. National Geographic would love to run articles on them. They’d make money like hotcakes on such sensational relics.

The problem is that no one can actually find any of these skeletons.