Many of these have been confirmed outside of the Bible as well. For instance, the town of Anab’s giants still exists today, called Khirbet Anab, 13 miles southwest of Hebron. The Execration Texts of Twelfth Dynasty Egypt (1900 B.C.) now on display at the Berlin Museum, mention by name the Anakim giants and Ashdod, the “city of the giants.” One of the most incredible accounts of ancient giants was by Hellenistic geographer Eumachus who told of two separate 36-foot human skeletons which were allegedly uncovered by Carthaginians somewhere around 300 B.C.!
The historian Josephus (37-95 A.D.), who lived in Hebron (home of Biblical giants), wrote that he had on multiple occasions dug up human bones of enormous size. He also wrote about the people of Judah facing the giants of Hebron, saying “There were till then left a race of giants, who had bodies so large, and countenances so entirely different from other men, that they were surprising to the sight, and terrible to the hearing. The bones of these men are still shown to this very day, unlike to any credible relations of other men.” Josephus also wrote of Eleazar, a Jewish giant that stood over ten feet tall being one of the hostages the King of Persia sent to Rome to insure peace. Roman Emperor Aulus Vitellius also mentioned this writing that, “Darius, son of Artabanes, was sent as a hostage to Rome, he took with him, with diverse presents, a man 7 cubits high, a Jew named Eleazar, who was called a giant by reason of his greatness.”
Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote that during the reign of Claudius (41-54 A.D.) a nine-foot nine-inch giant named Gabbaras was brought from Arabia to Rome and placed head of the Adiutrix legions. The area today called “Baqa” near the valley of Hinnom was long known as “Valley of the Raphaim” or “Valley of the Giants.” The Ras Shamra texts, discovered in 1928 in Syria, are historical documents mentioning the economy, history, and religion of Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) as well as the giant Rephaim which then inhabited the area. In 135 A.D. soon after the Bar Kochba war, Buber’s Tanhuma describes Roman Emperor Hadrian’s encounter with Rabbi Johnanan ben Zakkai’s in which he was shown the skeletons of fallen biblical “Amorites” measuring 18 cubits, or 30 feet tall! According to Jacques de Voragine, Saint Christopher, the Christian martyr “was of gigantic stature, had a terrifying mien, and was twelve coudees tall,” a coudee being slightly longer than a modern foot.
In an old book called “History and Antiquities of Allerdale” there is a report of a giant found by one “Hugh Hodson of Thorneway,” in Cumberland England during the middle ages. The report states that, “the said gyant was buried four yards deep in the ground, which is now a corn field. He was four yards and a half long, and was in complete armor; his sword and battle-axe lying by him. His teeth were six inches long and two inches broad.”
The Cocopa Indian tribe have an oral history describing giants of the past able to carry logs so heavy that 6 humans failed to budge! Considering that humans can carry on average twice their body weight and the average human is 150 pounds, this means the logs would have weighed over 1,800 pounds. In H.T. Wilkins book “Mysteries of Ancient South America,” he retold old Peruvian tales of a time during their past when a race of giants came from the Pacific Ocean on ships and invaded the lowlands of Peru, forcing the Inca to retreat high into their mountain strongholds in the Andes. The Incas said that some of the giants were so huge that “from the knee down, they were as tall as a tall man!” The Inca legends also closely parallel the biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that “these giants brought no women with them, and because they were too big for the Inca women, they became homosexual, and one day while they were publicly polluting the marketplace with these practices, a fire from heaven rained down on them and consumed them!”
“Growing up in Nevada I had heard stories of the Sitecah from the Paiute Indians that lived in the area. They told of red-haired men and women of light colored skin as tall as 12 feet who originally lived in the area when the Paiutes had first arrived. Evidently these human giants liked to eat the Indians so they had problems making friends. The Indian tribes of the area finally joined and ambushed the giants killing most of them on the spot. The remaining giants took refuge in a cave. The Indians demanded they come out and fight but the giants refused. So the Indians piled brush into the cave and set it on fire. Any giants that did run out were shot with arrows, the remaining giants were asphiyxiated.” -Garry Nelson, “Human Giants”
Many early explorers including Vespucci, Drake, Coronada, De Soto and Narvaez all mention encountering giant human beings in their journeys. The first Europeans to sail along the Patagonian coast were Ferdinand Magellan and his crew in 1520. Their first meeting with the Tehuelches was recorded by Antonio Pigafetta: “One day, when no one was expecting it, we saw a giant, completely naked, by the sea. He danced and jumped and singing, spread sand and dust over his head. He was truly well built … The captain named these kind of people Pataghoni. They have no houses but huts, like the Egyptians. They live on raw meat and eat a kind of sweet root which they call capac. The two giants we had on board ship ate their way through a large basket of biscuits, and ate rats without skinning them. They drank a half bucket of water at once."
When Hernando De Soto reached the territory of the Apalachee around Tallahassee, he recorded meeting a giant Indian chief whom he described as “a man of monstrous proportions.” At the same time as De Soto, across the continent near present day California/Arizona, Francisco Coronado was leading a team to search for the legendary beautiful “Seven Cities of Cibola,” and ran into several tribes of giants. Pedro de Castaneda, one of Coronado’s team members later wrote a complete history of the expedition mentioning their meetings with giant Indians. In one such passage he wrote of their encounter with the Seri Indian tribe: “Don Rodrigo Maldonado, who was captain of those who went in search of the ships, did not find them, but he brought back with him an Indian so large and tall that the best man in the army reached only to his chest. It was said that other Indians were even taller on the coast.”
In around 1542, within months of De Soto and Coronado’s expeditions, 5 year old Fray Diego Duran moved with his Christian missionary family to central Mexico and spent most of his life there. During his travels, he recorded several times coming in contact with giant Indians: "It cannot be denied that there have been giants in this country. I can affirm this as an eyewitness, for I have met men of monstrous stature here. I believe that there are many in Mexico who will remember, as I do, a giant Indian who appeared in a procession of the feast of Corpus Christi. He appeared dressed in yellow silk and a halberd at his shoulder and a helmet on his head. And he was all of three feet taller than the others."
In his book "History of the Indies," Joseph de Acosta also tells a tale similar to Duran’s: "When I was in Mexico, in the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred eighty six, they found one of those giants buried in one of our farms, which we call Jesus del Monte, of whom they brought a tooth to be seen, which (without augmenting) was as big as the fist of a man; and, according to this, all the rest was proportionable, which I saw and admired at his deformed greatness."