5 '2 2 THE STATURE OF MAN AT VARIOUS EPOCHS. 



ations grow smaller and smaller; and so the colossal statures of the 

 first men have dAvindled to frailer forms. The opinion of Esdras 

 appears among all peoples and in all histories of later times. The 

 Greeks expressed the same idea of physical decadence, of a falling 

 away from the grand stature of personages in the heroic age. Homer 

 and Hesiod lament the decline, and, later, Herodotus, Pausanias, and 

 Philostrates speak of it in a similar strain. Plutarch finally goes so 

 far as to liken the men of his time to infants in comparison with 

 the ancients. Among the Eomans the same conception is found. Re- 

 call the lines of Virgil when the laborer with his plow turns up the 

 bones and arms of his ancestors: " He gazes astounded on the gigan- 

 tic bones that start from their broken sepulchers." Pliny in his 

 natural history expresses even more extreme ideas in this regard. 

 He mentions the discovery in a mountain of Crete of a human skele- 

 ton G cubits long, or more than 20 meters. 



The moderns have had the same notions concerning the diminution 

 of man's size. The historians of the Norse lands in many a passage 

 celebrated the huge stature of the ancient inhabitants of Scan- 

 dinavia. 



Belief in the former colossal height of man and his continued de- 

 cline in size through the ages seemed to be verified by the discovery 

 of huge bones in ancient tombs. Lecat mentions tombs in which 

 were found bones of giants 15, 20, BO, and 32 feet tall. But in his 

 day scholars were no longer dupes of such evidence. It was known 

 at the time — that is, in the second half of the eighteenth century — 

 that the enormous bones were not those of human beings, but of 

 large animals. In the opinion of Buft'on they belonged to a horse 

 or an elephant ; for, he says, at one time warriors were buried with 

 their war horses, and so, possibly, with their war elephants. But 

 in less enlightened times, the bones were taken to be those of immense 

 giants and were venerated as such. Sometimes they were exposed 

 at cathedral doors. According to Langer, cited by Launois and Roy, 

 one could see an exhibition of this nature under the porch of the 

 chapel of the castle at Cracow as late as 1872. It was composed of 

 a mastodon's l)one, the skull of a rhinoceros, and one of the jawbones 

 of a whale. 



Of all these finds the most celebrated on account of the discussions 

 to which it gave rise was made in 1013 near Romans, Dauphine, 

 by workmen engaged in digging sand. Near a building of brick they 

 unearthed a skeleton 25 feet kmg. Now, it was pretended that a dis- 

 covery of medallions bearing the image of Marius had been made in 

 the neighborhood; and these tAvo events sufficed as ground for the 

 supposition that the bones were those of the giant Teutobochus, king 

 of the Teutons, who had been conquered by Marius, near Aix, in 102 

 B. C , and had died soon after. Jean Riolan, physician and skillful 



