Cardiff Giant
The Cardiff Giant , Giant of Cardiff or the American Goliath went down as one of the greatest scientific forgeries in the history of North American archeology . It was a statue of a giant named after its place of origin, the village of Cardiff in New York State . The statue was made by the tobacco grower George Hull, an atheist , after a disagreement at a Methodist meeting about Genesis 6: 4 and the assumption that there were giants on earth in ancient times. Hull purchased a four-foot-long plaster block from Fort Dodge , Iowa, and said it was needed for a statue of Abraham Lincoln . He shipped the plaster of paris to Chicago, where he commissioned the German stonemason Edward Burghardt to create the image of a man and swore him to secrecy.
Various acids and colors were used to make the giant look old and weathered. The surface was processed with steel needles attached to a board to simulate pores. In November 1868, Hull transported the statue by rail and buried it on the grounds of his relative and accomplice, William Newell. By then, he had spent $ 2,600 on the counterfeit (about $ 46,000 today). About a year later Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols to supposedly dig a well, and the giant was "discovered" on October 16, 1869.
Newell put a tent over the "Cardiff Giant" and charged 25 cents admission for visitors who wanted to see the giant. Two days later he raised the price to 50 cents. The people came in whole wagon loads.
Scientific observers identified the alleged fossils as a hoax a short time after they were discovered on a farm, but this did not detract from the large number of tourists willing to pay .
The American circus pioneer P. T. Barnum is said to have seized the opportunity and lured the arriving bystanders astray with a replica . After the interest in the real forgery waned after the background became known, Barnum's exhibition became a real hit.
The remains of the supposed Cardiff giant are now on display in the Cooperstown Agricultural Museum.
Alleged finds of skeletons and other relics of "giants" still concern the media in the USA today.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ceram, page 264
- ↑ When Giants roamed the Earth
- ↑ History Channel, Search for the Lost Giants ( Memento of the original from July 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
literature
- James Taylor Dunn: The True, Moral and Diverting Tale of the Cardiff Giant or The American Goliath . New York 1948
- CW Ceram : The First American . the discovery of Native American cultures in North America. Hannelore Marek and Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Munich and Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-7608-1928-1 , chapter 17.