Giants Were Here!

Answers to Quora Questions by Yair Davidiy

25 Giant Animals You Won't Believe Are Real

The Image above shows a giant dog. The web-site gives more examples of giant animals that actually exist, e.g.

25 Giant Animals You Won't Believe Are Real

If animals can grow, under certain circumstances, to several times their normal size why could not humans?

The query by Hussein Goldberg was:
Do Jews believe Giants once existed?

Belief in giants is found all over the world. Only in modern times have people become skeptical about it. Jews believe in the Bible. The Bible speaks of giants. Goliath (1-Samuel 17:4) and his brother (2-Chronicles 20:5) were giants.

There are other passages referring to giants:

2-Samuel (NASB) 21:
15 There was war again between the Philistines and Israel, and David went down together with his servants, and they fought against the Philistines. And David grew weary. 16 And Ishbi-benob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels2 of bronze, and who was armed with a new sword, thought to kill David. 17 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah came to his aid and attacked the Philistine and killed him. Then David's men swore to him, 'You shall no longer go out with us to battle, lest you quench the lamp of Israel.'

Genesis 6:
4 The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

Numbers (NASB) 13:
21 So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, at Lebo-hamath. 22 When they had gone up into the Negev, they came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.).... 28 Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there... 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, 'We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.' 32 So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, 'The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it areÂ men of great size. 33 There also we saw theÂ Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.'

Deuteronomy 2:
' 10 (The Emim lived there formerly, a people as great, numerous, andÂ tall as the Anakim. 11 Like the Anakim, they are also regarded as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim....
' 20 (It is also regarded as the land of the Rephaim, for Rephaim formerly lived in it, but the Ammonites call them Zamzummin, 21 a people as great, numerous, andÂ tall as the Anakim, but the LORD destroyed them before them. And they dispossessed them and settled in their place,

Deuteronomy 3:
'11 (For only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bedstead was an iron bedstead; it is in Rabbah of the sons of Ammon. Its length was nine cubits and its width four cubits by ordinary cubit.)

Why Do Conventionally-Minded Scientists not believe in Giants?

1. The Engineering Aspect
As things get bigger they need more support. A building twice as tall as another needs (in theory) about eight times more support at the base. A living organism that gets bigger would need too much of difference in bones, structure, etc. This claim however is not born out by evidence from nature, e.g.

Meganisoptera
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3...
Controversy has prevailed as to how insects of the Carboniferous period were able to grow so large. The way oxygen is diffused through the insect's body via its tracheal breathing system puts an upper limit on body size, which prehistoric insects seem to have well exceeded.34

See more examples both from the past and present,

Giants in the Old Testament by Tim Chaffey
https://answersingenesis.org/bib...

2. Buildings and Utensils etc.
Bulildings ,stairways, tools, etc, of a size that could only be used by giants are quite common. It is claimed however these are only ceremonial and were not intended for actual use.

3. Lack of Giant Skeletons
This controversial. There are claims that skeletons, and bits of skeletons, etc, have been found and counter-claims that such is not the case. The jaw bone of what may be an 18 foot creature has been found in China. It is not certain if this is of a man or an ape. To my mind if an ape could become that tall so could a human!

So too, the skeletons of a species of giant ape has been found in numerous places in Asia.
See:

The Largest Ape That Ever Lived Was Doomed By Its Size
By Mark Strauss
https://news.nationalgeographic....
Extract:
And Gigantopithecus was pretty darn big. Fossils indicate it stood as high as 10 feet (3 meters) and weighed up to 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) ... Gigantopithecus thrived in the tropical forests of what is now southern China...

4. Pygmies and Giants: The Island Rule

Human beings have inbuilt ADAPTATION MECHANISMS! This is NOT EVOLUTION! On the contrary. It does however help explain many phenomena that Evolutionist claim as proof of their theory. This is Misleading. ALL organisms have inbuilt mechanisms for adaptation that once activated become hereditary. Both small size (pygmianism) and large size (giantism) may be differing reactions to the same phenomena. Pygmianism may be caused by the need to reach maturity earlier and begat offspring sooner. Side benefits include lower requirements for basic necessities.

The "Island Rule," posits that when mainland animals colonize islands, small species tend to evolve larger bodies, and large species tend to evolve smaller bodies. This is most noticeable in island populations of animals but it may also occur in any isolated environment. J. Bristol Foster (1964) proposed that certain island creatures evolved into larger versions of themselves while others became smaller versions of what they had been. Large animals from the mainland who reach an island may be immune from their former predators since the water around them insulates them. They also cannot forage far afield as previously since the island expanse is limited. In times of stress they may have difficulty in feeding themselves. There is no further need for their great size which has become a liability. Smaller pygmy varieties therefore spring forth.

See:

Phyletic dwarfism - Wikipedia

Insular dwarfism - Wikipedia

Examples:

Different types of tiny mammoths from islands off the coast of California, of Alaska, of Siberia, of Sardinia, and of Crete.
Different types of pygmy elephants from Sardinia, Crete, Sicily, Malta, Cyprus, and the Greek islands of Nazos, Rhodes, and Tilos.
Types of dwarf stegodonts (a kind of elephant) from the Philippines, Flores, Sulawesi, Sumba and Timor.
More examples of dwarf types found on islands included types of deer, tigers, leopards, foxes, wolves, hippopotamus, emus (birds).
Homo floresiensis seems to have been a kind of human being that once existed on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The average height was about 3 and a half feet.

The same factors that give rise to pygmy types may also produce giants. On islands an ecological niche may become available conducive to a large size. There may be less predators, a need to travel further, be stronger, live longer, etc.
It is interesting to note that in the Ancient World legends concerning giants often located them on islands. There were famous giants in Crete including Titan, and Gigantus. The Island of Rhodes was also associated with giants, so too Britain once had giants. Apart from animals increasing in size to gigantic proportions it also often happens that due a change in surroundings they simply get bigger to a significant degree without entering the category of gigantism. For example red deer in New Zealand originally taken from Britain are now twice as large those of the British Isles. This is evidently due to there being no ecological advantage in New Zealand for red deer to remain small.

Examples of Animal Giantism:
Numerous types of giant rats and mice, and other rodents.
The elephant bird, among the largest birds ever, formerly living on Madagascar (extinct).
The extinct moa of New Zealand.
Extinct giant ducks from Hawaii.
The extinct giant swan, Cygnus falconeri, of Sicily and Malta.
Numerous other types of birds including giant parrots, owls, and pigeons.
Tortoises, lizards, and other reptiles.
Different types of insect.

See:

Wikipedia, "Island gigantism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is...
Benefits of large size that have been suggested for island tortoises include decreased vulnerability to scarcity of food and/or water, through ability to survive for longer intervals without them, or ability to travel longer distances to obtain them. Periods of such scarcity may be a greater threat on oceanic islands than on the mainland.