![]() ![]() “Some 19th century estimates or measurements of individuals were still high,” upwards of 7 feet. “Popular interest in Patagonian giants waned as scientific reports began to appear,” writes Sturtevant. While subsequent voyages after Magellan’s measured the Patagonians up to 10 feet tall, others put them more in the 6-foot range. Sturtevant in his essay “Patagonian Giants and Baroness Hyde de Neuville's Iroquois Drawings,” the Tehuelche were just a particularly statuesque people. That, as scholars put it, is a sick burn. It was the map above that likely influenced them, including this drawing of Commodore John Byron conversing with a Patagonian woman. You may have noticed by now that most illustrations of the Patagonian giants involve Europeans handing them things. And our trusty explorer would be damned if he wasn't going to try to bring back evidence in pretty much the most obnoxious way you could imagine. But it could well be that the people Magellan encountered, the Tehuelche, were indeed enormous, and that therefore this myth has some grounding in reality. ![]() The illustration above proves it-Patagonia was once inhabited by giants that positively dwarfed the heavenly Europeans that would come to conquer them.Īlright, maybe that isn’t airtight evidence. And he was so tall that the tallest of us only came up to his waist,” and had a big, booming voice. Describing the scene was a scholar along for the journey, Antonio Pigafetta, who kept a diary of the journey that was later turned into the book Magellan's Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation: “When he was before us, he began to marvel and to be afraid, and he raised one finger upward, believing that we came from heaven. The man was able to lead the giant to a small island offshore, where the great captain waited. ![]() Magellan ordered one of his men to make contact (the unwitting emissary’s no doubt hilarious reaction to this sadly has been lost to history), and to be sure to reciprocate the dancing and singing to demonstrate friendship. In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan took time out of his busy schedule of sailing around the world to stop in what is now Patagonia, where he found a naked giant dancing and singing on the shore. ![]()
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