Giant human skeletons

Giant skeletons reported in the United States until the early twentieth century were a combination of hoaxes, scams, fabrications, and the misidentifications of extinct megafauna. Many were reported to have been found in Native American burial mounds. Examples from 7 ft (2.1 m) to 20 ft (6.1 m) tall were reported in many parts of the United States.

The claims of "giant skeletons" were debunked in 1934 by Aleš Hrdlička, curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian Institution opposed the popular myth that an "ancient white race" were the Mound Builders. The role of the Smithsonian Institution in debunking such claims led to a conspiracy theory that Smithsonian archeologists were destroying giants' bones in order to cover up the existence of giants.^[1]

Hrdlička blamed the reports of giant skeletons on the "will to believe" coupled with "amateur anthropologists" who were unfamiliar with human anatomy. In 2014 an internet story began circulating which claimed that the Smithsonian Institution had custody of giant skeletons but they destroyed "thousands of giant skeletons" in the early 20th century. The internet story about the Smithsonian was debunked by Reuters and the Associated Press.