Did Giants once live in Sicily?
Giants appear in the mythologies of many cultures. This is fair enough. It doesn’t take much to wonder what if someone was taller and stronger than the tallest person you know. But it would also be difficult to doubt the existence of giants if you kept finding their bones everywhere. Sicily is a large island in the Mediterranean and is today, an autonomous region of Italy. Over the centuries, huge bones were found in the mountain caves of the island. One example is documented by the Italian writer, Giovanni Boccaccio in his book, Genealogia deorum gentilium (Genealogy of the Pagan Gods). Boccaccio speaks of how, in 1342, in a cave in Mount Erice, townsfolk came across the bones of what they believed was a giant. The majority of the bones turned to dust, but three teeth remained, along with one of the leg bones which let the townsfolk estimate the ‘giants’ height. [ref] Myth and Geology edited by Luigi Piccardi, W. Bruce Masse 2007 [/ref] However, this was far from the only supposed giant skeleton found over the centuries in Sicily. So many bones were reportedly taken from the Cave of St Ciro in 1663, that according to Vincenzo Aurio,… Continue reading
