Archaeological Proof of the Biblical Accounts of Giant Men?
On October 16th, 1869, as workers dug a well behind the barn of William C. “Stub” Newell in Cardiff, New York, they struck stone about three feet down. As they cleared the soil around the obstruction, a huge foot was revealed. The workers continued to dig, and were astonished when they finally unearthed the petrified remains of a ten-foot-tall man. As news spread, archaeologists, scientists, and thousands of the curious, flocked to Newell’s farm. He charged visitors 50 cents for a look. Newell made no claims about the giant’s authenticity, but invited visitors to draw their own conclusions. While it seemed to many observant people to be a crude statue, many more saw it as proof of the Bible’s assertions that giants had once walked the earth.
Skeptics had the right of it, as the Cardiff giant was actually a fake. It was a statue created by an atheist named George Hull after a heated debate at a revival meeting about Genesis 6:4, which claimed that the giants had once inhabited the earth. Hull bought a ten-foot block of Gypsum in Iowa, and shipped it to Chicago. There, he swore a stonecutter to secrecy, and commissioned him to shape it into the likeness of a man. Chemicals were applied to give it an aged look, and needles were used to puncture and pit its surface to make it look more weathered. Hull then shipped it to the farm of his cousin, William Newell, who buried it behind his barn in 1868. A year later, Newell hired workers to dig a well behind the barn, where they came across the buried hoax.
