Mythology 's Extraterrestrial Gods: The Giant Cyclopes? One of the major themes of mythologies around the world relate to the concept of giants. It 's easy to extrapolate and super-size up the human body to giant proportions (Hollywood 's done that a few times in Grade-B sci-fi flicks), and there are many tall tales and fairy tales/folklore about giants like the American Paul Bunyan or the kiddie favourite "Jack and the Beanstalk". However, while it 's easy to imagine human giants, however, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that these giants can 't be the case in reality without major anatomical alternations to the human physique. Now let 's say the average human is six foot tall. The maximum height for a human male is a fraction under nine feet; for a human female a fraction over 8 feet according to the "Guinness Book of Records", but humans much above 7 ½ feet are very rare indeed. 7 ½ feet and below isn 't really giant-sized, just very tall. A real giant say is at least double the human average - say 12 foot high - and that and more is not all that uncommon in the mythological literature and all cultures have tales of people of exceptional size. However, most of the mythological giants tend to be under twelve feet …show more content…
The person weighs eight times as much. However, the supporting structure, the cross-section (width and breadth) of the legs (muscle and bone) has only increased by a factor of four. So your legs are four times as thick, but they must support a weight eight times as great. If you triple the dimensions you have 27 times the mass, but only nine times the supporting area for that weight. A fourfold increase sees a massive increase in weight to 64 times normal; the supporting structure is however only 16 times greater. The ecological catchcry of 'limits to growth ' takes on a new meaning