Of course, in fairy tales, folk tales and legends. You can also read about them in some ancient manuscripts and even in sacred books. For example, in myths Ancient Greece, in the Iliad and Odyssey, in the Bible and in the Koran. There are many descriptions of giants, cyclops, various evil spirits, heroes, in a word, huge characters who are not like us. One of the most famous historical characters is the giant Goliath, who was more than three meters tall. Subsequently, King David fought with him and won.

In our area there is a legend that giant people not only lived on the banks of mighty rivers and in the mountains, but even after death they still continue to grow underground. Allegedly on ancient cemeteries, near dilapidated mazars, huge skeletons are found, the leg bones of which are extended about four meters from the skull.

It was believed that all this was fantasy, fiction. No smart historian will recognize a fact as scientific, relying only on ancient legends. Give them, historians, evidence - bones from mounds, shards, jewelry, ruins of giant buildings. Well, at least a huge tooth or jaw of a giant, which are found from time to time in different parts of the world.

Archaeological finds different years confirm: giant people lived on Earth in ancient times. There is evidence of finds of the remains of giants in almost all parts of the world: in Mexico, Peru, Tunisia, Pennsylvania, Texas, the Philippines, Syria, Morocco, Australia, Spain, Georgia, South-East Asia, on the islands of Oceania - everywhere there are such artifacts and there are legends similar to ours. You can believe in them or not.

Fairy tales? But here in Kazakhstan, quite recently, archaeologists made a sensational discovery. They found skeletons of two-meter people in the Aktobe region. These, of course, are not four-meter monsters, but still not our average height of 160 to 170 cm.

Kazakh scientists immediately came to the conclusion that in ancient times giants actually lived on the territory of our republic. In their opinion, age archaeological site“Kumsai”, where excavations are underway and skeletons of giants have been found, is more than 4 thousand years old. This is the time of transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age. Scientists have counted more than 160 mounds there. So many have never been found anywhere in Eurasia. If there is a giant in each mound, it will be possible to assume that in ancient times there really was a country of giants between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. And if so far only two have been found, then what a rarity! In the Guinness Book of Records, two-meter giants constantly compete to see which of them has more centimeters in height. Every country has its own giant. Now in the Book there are a dozen heroes more than 2 meters tall.

A couple of years ago in the Caucasus, in the mountains of the Borjomi Gorge, Georgian archaeologists also discovered the remains of mysterious creatures about which legends have been made for centuries local residents. The bones of fossil Caucasians belong to giant people who lived 25 thousand years ago. Georgian archaeologists claim that the height of their giant ancestor could have been from 2.5 to 3 meters.

From all the legends about giants, a general picture can be drawn. Firstly, giants, according to legend, had incredible strength. It was thanks to them that the world received many giant monuments, such as the Tibetan City of the Gods, Stonehenge, Teotihucan, the Egyptian Sphinx, etc. For example, in Lebanon, at the base of the Baalbek terrace there are three huge blocks, each weighing 800 tons. They were fitted to each other with amazing precision - down to the millimeter. And this is an impossible task even for the most modern construction equipment. Just to move one such block would require the effort of more than 40 thousand people. Who could manually build such a gigantic structure if not the giants?!

Secondly, also according to legends, the giants possessed knowledge that modern science has not yet reached. For example, Atlas, who revealed to people the mysteries of astronomy, which is why he was immortalized in the image of a strongman who supports Earth. True, now these same qualities are usually attributed to aliens who supposedly once visited the earth, built giant structures and shared their knowledge with earthlings. Our ancestors themselves, apparently, were stupid! They couldn't think of anything!

Height of two meters and a few more centimeters is a lot. But it's not that uncommon either. For example, Peter the Great and his associate Lefort were exactly like that - more than 2 meters tall. They write about Peter differently: sometimes he was 204 cm, sometimes 240. Obviously, no one approached the Tsar with his arshin. But in the museum “Peter’s House” there is his bed – very large!

The king clearly had health problems. Usually tall men have large feet, but the two-meter Peter had only size 39 feet, which is why Peter, although Great, was unstable - he walked with a swing, with a cane (he often beat bribe-takers with it), stumbled and even fell. Now most of our contemporaries wear shoes like his. It turns out that this is the most common women's shoe size in the world - 39.

The famous boxer Nikolai Valuev has a height almost like Peter the Great - 213 cm, but the shoe size is proportional - 52 (paradoxically, the mythical Bigfoot "Yeti", judging by the footprints, has a smaller foot size).

The boxer also refutes the assertion that heroes are not smart. Nikolai is a deputy of the State Duma, from the United Russia party, a cheerful and witty TV presenter.

The information that all tall people are strong is doubtful. On the contrary, doctors say that modern giants usually grow up as a result of brain disease, and their bones, and especially joints, cannot withstand the enormous weight and also suffer. Many heroes walk on crutches, and in old age they suffer from various diseases and rarely do any of them live long.

However, not all tall people are necessarily sick. Human growth is influenced, among other things, by environmental factors, and sometimes by inherited diseases from parents. Height can be influenced by belonging to a particular race and nation. For example, the average height of urban Chinese is 165 cm (men) and 155 cm (women), and the average height of the Dutch is 178.7 cm and 168.7 cm, respectively. Living conditions, in particular nutrition, are also of great importance. For example, prosperous South Koreans on average 7 cm higher than northerners living in poverty.

Movies often show heroic knights. Meanwhile, their armor preserved in castles and museums is very small. Our contemporary even of average height cannot put them on. Such a “hero” mounted a horse with the help of servants.

Like all people, nothing human is alien to giants. Almost all of them dream of a soul mate, who, given their enormous stature, is difficult to find and charm. For example, a resident of Mongolia, Bao Khishun (height 2.36 m), only at the age of 56 met his life partner, with whom he got married. The giant's wife is a 29-year-old Chinese woman, who, with a height of 1.68 meters, barely reaches the elbow of her chosen one. Bao Hishun became famous for saving the lives of two dolphins from the Chinese Dolphinarium. With his long arms, he pulled out the plastic bags stuck there from the throats of the marine mammals.

Big people experience a lot of inconvenience in everyday life. Plus size clothes are made, but usually only in the USA, where there are a lot of tall and fat people. Their feet can be up to size 60, but where can they get shoes like that? In the luggage department?

Seats on airplanes, compartments on trains, furniture in hotels, doorways, bathtubs and showers - all this is designed for middle-aged people. The only way a giant can get into a car is by crouching down.


President of Ukraine V. Yushchenko and Mayor of Kyiv V. Klitschko

How can you stand up straight on the bus? In addition, most giants have serious health problems. Both ordinary people and historians, especially doctors, have always been interested in this mystery of nature - gigantism. But not all the reasons for it have been revealed.

Lovers of all sorts of ratings, the Americans recently found out that they are no longer the highest in the world: they are ahead of the Europeans, or rather, the inhabitants of Northern Europe - the Dutch, Norwegians, Danes and Germans. The height of Americans is declining for the first time in 300 years, while the height of Europeans is clearly increasing. Today the palm belongs to the Netherlands, where men are taller than Americans by an average of 4.7 cm, and women are taller than Americans by 5.7 cm. Next to the Dutch, whose average height is 184.3 cm, are Norwegians, Danes and Germans. Americans with a height of 179 cm dropped to 4th place in the ranking, but they are the most well-fed. The Italians occupy an even lower position with 174.5 cm. The French are ahead of them.

Two heroes were especially famous among Kazakhstanis: the famous Kazakh wrestler and circus artist Khadzhimukan Munaitpasov (1871-1948), and in the 50s of the last century, basketball player Uvais Akhtaev amazed fans with his height - 236 cm. He was the best center in the USSR, and perhaps in the world, given that at that time there were no players even two meters tall in the country.

Khadzhimukan Munaitpasov, although he stood out among his not very tall fellow countrymen, was still “only” 195 cm tall, weighed 139 kg, and had a shoe size of 54. But he was beautifully built and strong, and was not famous for his tall stature. Khadzhimukan is the first Kazakh to win the world champion title in French wrestling, and has repeatedly won the world, Russian, regional, and then all-Union championships in classical wrestling among heavyweights.

It is generally accepted that heroes are kind and sympathetic people. The strongman Khadzhimukan was just like that. He founded the first professional theater in the history of Kazakhstan, from which many famous artists of that time emerged. And already elderly, during the Great Patriotic War, participating in various championships, he collected money and donated an airplane to the front, named in honor of Amangeldy Imanov.

Of the Soviet female giants, the most famous is the famous basketball player Ulyana Semenova, who was born in Latvia in 1952 and has a height of 2 meters 13 centimeters. Russian Ekaterina Gamova, who twice won Olympic silver medals as a member of the volleyball team, is 7 cm shorter than Semenova - her height is 2 meters 6 centimeters. Katya is the daughter-in-law of actress and director Svetlana Druzhinina and cinematographer Anatoly Mukasey.

No “heroes” were found among Kazakh women. Although we have tall girls, the champion in height is called by wits the tallest “lady” in Kazakhstan... the chimney of the Ekibastuz State District Power Plant-2, which has a height of 419.7 m. This “young lady” was built in 1987 and is still Pore ​​is the tallest chimney in the world.

Interesting Facts:

* The ancient historian Herodotus wrote that the warriors of Sparta carried the skeleton of the giant Orestes on a pole during military campaigns. The skeleton reached 3.5 meters.

* The books of Pausanias say that in Syria, a human skeleton was raised from the bottom of the Sront River, which reached 5.5 meters.

* There is information about the four-meter skeleton in a medieval book called “History and Greed.” This skeleton was found in military garb, and a huge sword and ax were found nearby.

* In 1912, three-meter red-haired mummies were found in Nevada in the USA.

* In Turkey in the 1950s, road builders accidentally stumbled upon skeletons whose femurs alone were 120 cm long.

* In Southern Mongolia in 1999, British paleontologists found the fossilized skeleton of a giant. The length of the bones of his legs reached 7 meters, and the total height of the giant was 15 meters.

* Archaeologist Ralph von Koeningswald in Hong Kong in 1935 discovered human teeth that were 5 times larger than the teeth of an ordinary person.

*On the island of Ponape in the 1970s, an American expedition of archaeologists raised from the ground the skeletons of people who were twice the size of modern humans.

* Not all of these amazing finds have been preserved and are available to researchers. Some have disappeared, others are in museum storage rooms. However, most scientists do not take the tales of giants seriously.

About human growth

*During the day, a person’s height changes by an average of 0.5-1 cm. The greatest growth occurs immediately after sleep: during the day, the intervertebral discs settle, and during the night they restore their original height.

* For astronauts, during a long-term stay in weightlessness, their height increases by 5-8 centimeters. However, this is quite dangerous, as the spine loses strength. After returning to Earth, growth gradually returns to its previous value.

* On average, men grow up to 18-25 years old, and women - up to 16-19 years old.

*In general, humanity is gradually “growing.” If 50 years ago the average height was 165 cm, now it is 2.5 cm more. On average, his weight also increased by about a kilogram. In teenagers, the changes are even more noticeable. The average height of a modern teenager is 3-5 centimeters greater than that of his peers in the 30s.

*An epochal change in human growth is called acceleration. For example, Neanderthals were almost no different in height from modern humans (160-165 cm). During the Middle Ages, human height began to decline. But over the past 100 years, the length of the human body has increased dramatically.

* In itself, high growth is not yet a sign of gigantism - a serious illness caused by excessive production of somatotropic hormone. Healthy people with gigantic height (200 cm or more) differ from people of average height only in their height. And people with gigantism also differ in proportions.

Does tall mean smart?

At different times, researchers have tried to establish a connection between the height and talents of different people. But it was not possible to derive patterns. It turned out that among the geniuses there are many “little ones”, which is explained by their inflated demands on themselves, ambitions and the desire to prove to others that they are no worse than the “long ones”. As Napoleon said to his adjutant, “you are not taller, but longer, and I can easily match your height by shortening you by a head.”

Here is more or less reliable information about the height of famous people.

Tamerlane - 145 cm. Genghis Khan - 145 cm. Alexander the Great - 150 cm. Charlemagne -150 cm. Nestor Makhno - 151 cm. Dmitry Medvedev - 162 cm. Joseph Stalin - 163 cm. Vladimir Lenin -164 cm. Nikita Khrushchev - 166 see Alexander Pushkin - 166 (or 161?) cm Winston Churchill - 166 cm Nicholas II -168 cm Napoleon I - 169 cm Vladimir Putin - 170 cm Konstantin Tszyu - 170 cm Adolf Hitler - 175 cm Leonid Brezhnev - 176 cm. Ivan the Terrible - 178 cm. Alexander I - 178 cm. Alexander III- 179 cm. Alexander II - 185 cm. Boris Yeltsin - 187 cm. Arnold Schwarzenegger - 187 cm. Jacques Chirac - 189 cm. Bill Clinton - 189 cm. Alexander Marshall - 193 cm. Charles De Gaulle - 196 cm. Philip Kirkorov - 198 cm. Vitali Klitschko 201 cm.

Famous women were also not all of basketball height: Queen Victoria - 152 cm. Catherine II - 157 cm. Elizaveta Petrovna - 180 cm. Tennis player Maria Sharapova - 188 cm.

It’s interesting how everything works in the world... Not so long ago, just in 2016, scientific information spread around the world that mummies of Giants were discovered in the Canary Islands, namely in Tenerife. It would seem a sensation, but only a few years have passed and this is already a secret of history, since no more information about these mummies and research results has been published.

It was reported that Spanish scientists are making a 3D scan of a giant mummy of one of the ancient representatives of the Guanche people - the aborigines who lived on the Canary Islands. The mummy itself was provided for research by the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid.

Using scanning technology, experts hope to learn more about how people lived, what killed them, and the funeral rituals they went through when they were buried. The mummies were carefully transported to the University Hospital of Quironsalud Madrid (HUQSM), the only facility with the latest scanning technology.

As part of this process, the mummies were scanned and ready for examination by a team of doctors that included Vicente Martinez de Vega, Javier Carrascoso and Silvia Badillo Rodriguez, Carmen Perez Dee, Teresa Gomez Espinosa and Esther Pons.

The group was accompanied during the examination of the mummies by a film crew from the national channel RTVE. A scanner that has low radiation levels but is very a high resolution, allows X-rays to penetrate an object and extract a huge amount of information in just one shot.

More than 2,000 cross-sectional images are acquired, which are then used to construct a volumetric and 3D image that can be studied by the team.

So, what is next? Where are the research results? Where is the answer to the question why the aborigines of the island of Tenerife were Giants? Just look at the hands of this “native”! There were people this tall in the Canary Islands?!


Guanches from the island of La Gomera. Drawing from “Description and History of the Distant Kingdom of Canary” by Leonardo Torriani (1592) Judging by the drawings of contemporaries who still found the Guanches alive, they somehow do not look very much like the usual image of “natives and aborigines.”

The origin of the Guanches is unknown to scientists. In the north of Tenerife there lived people with dark brown hair, and to the south there were brunettes. According to reports from Spanish and other conquerors, in the 15th century the island of Tenerife was inhabited by light-skinned people of the Caucasian type, among whom there were people with gray and blue eyes and with brown or reddish hair. The French Norman (Norman) Jean de Bettencourt described in detail the strange language of the Guanches, who supposedly could understand the speech of their fellow tribesmen without uttering a sound and only moving their lips, and also communicate by whistling at a distance of up to 15 kilometers.

Existed in the past and now hypotheses are put forward about their connection with ancient myth about Atlantis. Maybe the “Guanches” are representatives of the disappeared Atlantis?

The giant wanted to communicate not with people, but at least with fish. Drawing by Asya Belyaeva.

Once upon a time there lived a Giant on the Island.

He lived completely alone: ​​there were no people or other giants nearby. Only Akchinuk will sometimes run up and sniff - has the Giant prepared something tasty? But he will immediately remember that the Giant eats nothing but earth and fog, snorts, barks out of frustration and runs on.

The Giant had already studied all the constellations, he already knew by heart the voice of any of the birds and distinguished the steps of everyone in Akchinuk’s large family.

But he had no one to talk to, and he thought it might be interesting to talk to someone.

But he had no one to sing a song to, and he really loved to sing songs - about the Island, about the Ocean, about birds and fish, about everything he was used to.

Then the Giant decided to call people from another - small - island. And he said to them: “I will help you build houses, I will find you wood for kayaks, I will protect you and your homes from strong winds, just come live with me.”

People thought and decided to keep the Giant company - after all, he would build them a whole village! House after house appeared on the shores of the Ocean, and people came, occupied houses, and started farming.

The giant was glad that there was so much pleasant bustle, laughter, and voices around him. People were happy that they had their own giant.

This is how the Giant lived with people for a long, long time. He slept at night, and when the sun rose, he chased away the sleepy seagulls from his eyelashes and began his great day: he ate earth and fog, watched people, and composed songs. In a word, I wasn’t bored.

His hands were such that he could easily reach the clouds, tickle them with the claw of his little finger so that they cowered, laughed, sneezed - and at once splashed out all their rain. And that’s just what the Giant needed: most of all he loved to drink fresh rain, right from under the clouds.

His legs were such that he could easily step over the entire Island - from north to south, but he didn’t step over: what would he do there, alone, on the other side of the Island, without people?

The village built by the Giant has grown: now wherever you look there are houses, bustle, and only in the evening the nets gather, the birds hide in their nests, the voices become quieter. But as soon as the Giant takes a step, everyone looks at him displeasedly, saying, can’t you see that there are people all around? But as soon as the Giant starts talking about something, everyone swears: “Why are you shouting, are you scaring the children?” New people were born in the village, grew up, died, and then others were born. And the more time passed from the day the Giant called the people, the greater their discontent became: “Look, Giant! Lives here in our village! It’s stopping us: it’s so huge - it’s impossible to cover it with a hundred girths, you can’t get around it in a day!”

People in the village often organized games: they either made a ladder made of inflated fish bladders - the most dexterous and courageous had to walk along it, or they competed in accuracy and shot from a bow, or they measured their strength. But they never took the Giant into their games, and this offended him. Once, at a winter festival, when everyone was singing and beating tambourines, the Giant could not stand it and began to dance. And then the earth shook, and the people fled and no longer wanted to see the Giant in their village.

Go, they say, I’ll say hello,

He really didn’t want to live alone, and then he thought that he would probably be happy at the bottom of the ocean: there were a lot of different fish there - big and not so big, fast and slow, bright and the color of northern clouds. There, at the bottom, he will be at peace, and no one will kick him out, and he will become friendly neighbors - not with people, but with fish.

And here he lies on the bottom, watching the colorful fish movement. At first, the fish liked that they had such a Giant - in his long hair you can build a house and raise small fish, behind his body you can hide from all the big hungry ones.

But one day the Giant wanted to roll over to the other side. And he, without meaning to, caused a real commotion. Pisces was indignant: “Why raise waves for no reason? Lie down and lie like a stone!”

But one day the Giant wanted to look at the sun. He emerged from the Ocean, collected the sun's rays and released them at the bottom. The ocean lit up, and the blind deep-sea fish narrowed their eyes and gurgled with displeasure: “What a disgrace! Who came up with the idea for the sun to shine at the very bottom of the Ocean?”

But one day the Giant wanted to eat the earth. And he - handful by handful - began to eat the bottom, and stirred up the water, and the water became cloudy. And the motley fish swear: “Who will see our outfits now? Who can see us in such muddy water?”

And the fish gathered for an all-ocean council, and decided to drive the Giant from the bottom - back to land. They chose an ambassador - the prince of all salmon - Chinook salmon, so that he would inform the Giant about their decision:

“Swim,” he muttered, “I’ll say hello,

So much so that we don't see you again!

The giant did not believe the words of the salmon prince and said: “Let those fish who really want me to return to land forever tear out a hair from my head.” The fish rushed about and gathered in schools, but little by little, one after another they began to swim up to the Giant and pull out a hair at a time as a sign that it was time for him to leave them, the fishy Ocean. And they let his long hair float across the water, and his hair sprouted with algae, in which schools of fish settled, large and small, colorful and different.

And they pulled out so many of the giant’s hairs that he didn’t have a single one left. The Giant realized that he would not be able to have a friendly neighborhood with the fish, so he returned to the shore and sat down on the black sand. I sat down and thought: “I shouldn’t have gone to the fish without permission. But now I know that there is no need to go to the fish without asking.” He ran his hand over his bald head and came up with a new song:

What should I do now? Day and night

Gray loneliness follows me everywhere.

I tell him: “Listen, where did you come from here?”

And it blinks back - gray and dull.

I told him: “Go away,” I say, “over the mountain, across the river, into the field!”

But it is still silent, silent, gray and blind.

The giant sat by the ocean a little longer and thought about people and fish. Suddenly a joyful Ara flew past him: “What, Giant, are you sad? Come visit us on Aryan Island - it’s always noisy and fun here!” Ara’s last words reached the giant’s ears with the wind, and there was no trace of him.

“Well,” the Giant said to himself, “maybe the birds will accept me,” and he went to the noisy, fussy, restless bird island.

At first, the birds were happy that they had a rock-man on their island, that they could build nests on it, hide from bad weather, and that, unlike a real rock, it was always warm! And the Giant happily donated his body to the birds - so that they would be warm and cozy.

But one day he wanted to drink some rain, stood under a large black cloud - and the birds didn’t like it very much: “It may be cooler on a real rock, but it’s definitely drier!”

But one day he wanted to stretch his legs - and the birds liked it even less: “In a real rock, nothing shakes, and everything is calm in the nests!”

But one day he wanted to sing a song - and the birds didn’t like it at all: “Here’s another one!” Not a single real rock will allow itself to scream louder than us birds!”

And then the birds decided to drive the Giant away.

They chirp: “Fly well, good luck,

So much so that we don’t see you again!”

First they pecked him in his right palm, then in his left, and blood began to flow, and the Giant began to feel pain. Carefully so that not a single chick would fall, he removed the birds' nests from his bald head and shoulders.

“It’s hard for them, the birds, to be with me,” thought the Giant and went back to his Island. And while he walked, drops of blood fell to the ground and rose like berries.

He went out to the river bank and sniffed: “Akchinuk ran here recently.” The giant didn’t want to go anywhere else. He looked at Akchinuk's footprints in the snow. They minced - paw after paw. A little further away they were joined by other footprints, third ones, and even further away a whole trampled clearing could be seen, and it was no longer possible to tell where whose footprints were on it.

The Cormorant-Talker flew past him and disappeared into a cloud that looked like a large, slow fish. Following him, another Cormorant appeared and, flying over the Giant’s ears, asked:

Hey! Big eyes! Didn't you see where my brother flew?

The giant did not answer and only pointed towards the cloud-fish. The fish cloud floated across the sky along with its reflection, which floated across the ocean.

“I would also like to have brothers and sisters, and many, many others,” thought the Giant.

And then he took a breath of fog, washed it down with rain and began to dig a big, big hole. When the matter was over, the Giant lay down in this hole and covered himself with earth and snow. And many months later, enjoying the sun, his body sprouted huge beautiful mushrooms - the kind that do not grow anywhere except on the Island. And there are so many of them that no matter how much you collect, there are no fewer. Come and see for yourself.

Once upon a time, a giant lived on the South Island. One day he went to visit North Island. Having reached the Raukawa Strait, he jumped from the South Island to the North Island in one fell swoop. A whale was swimming in the strait at that time. The giant noticed the streams of steam swaying in the wind and snatched the whale from the water. Having tucked the whale under his arm, the giant walked along the coast and soon saw a small river. On the bank of the river he sat down and ate the whole whale, including the skin, but the skeleton was too much for him. Having eaten, the giant stretched out on a soft mat of treetops and fell asleep.

The Maori who lived in these places were not at all happy to see the giant. The giant's foot crushed all the kumara they had planted, and his hand blocked the path to their pa. The tops of the trees swayed rhythmically from the giant's breath, and the people decided to catch the giant in a trap. Not far from Tokomaru, they cut off all the branches from one tall tree and tied its top to the ground. People hoped that the giant would step on the rope and fall into their hands. The giant woke up, took a few steps and saw the trap. As he passed by, he kicked her with contempt. The tree straightened up and hit the hill with such force that it split into three parts. The next step took the giant to Cape Vostochny, from where he dived into the sea. No one ever saw him again.

Are people telling the truth? Who knows? The footprint of a giant remained on Cape Vostochny. Found on the river near Turangi ancient skeleton whale Near Tokomaru Bay there are three small hills nearby, like the tops of a triangle.

In the waters Pacific Ocean there is a barely visible, lonely volcanic island that is known as Easter Island. It received this name by the will of the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen, who discovered this piece of land lost in the ocean on the day of the Christian holiday on April 14, 1722. The island already had local name Rapa Nui, which did not bother the stranger at all.

Easter Island resembles a triangle with an area of ​​165.5 km2. It belongs to and is almost 3 thousand km away from it. Now about 1.5 thousand people live on the island, who raise livestock and engage in fishing.

This is probably the most mysterious of all the islands on our planet: there is a whole sculptural museum under open air, which has more than 600 giant statues. It attracts the attention of scientists all over the world. The statues are visible from afar. They are like real giants who occupied the island and took up a perimeter defense.

Interestingly, they are all very similar to each other, one might say, like two peas in a pod. The only difference is in height from 3 to 22 m.

Huge heads with low foreheads, long noses and elongated ears, short necks are most likely their most typical features. At the foot of the Rano Raraku volcano, there are about 150 20-meter giants carved from stone, but not yet completed. Apparently, this is where a huge open-air workshop was located. All the statues were carved on the slopes of the volcano, and then moved down to a previously prepared place, where they were finally finished. But why did work in the workshop suddenly stop? What kind of statues are these anyway? How old are they? Who and when, why, so skillfully carved them out of the rocks and placed them all over the island. After all, it has been established that on Easter Island they did not know what a wheel was. In the end, how did this people - the architect - appear, where and under what circumstances did they disappear?

One of the legends that could be heard from the lips of old aborigines tells about the seven first settlers who arrived on this island from the west, that is, from Polynesia. These, they say, are their sculptural images - the only statues turned towards the ocean, while all the others are turned towards the interior of the island...

In fact, on the ocean shore, as if on guard, seven stone giants stand.

But if we assume that this legend is true, then why are the first islanders not at all similar to the Polynesians?

Everywhere on the rocks of the island there are some outlandish, unlike anything else, “engravings” that girdle the stone walls with a barely noticeable dotted line.

The St. Petersburg Ethnographic Museum and some other museums around the world keep several wooden tablets from Easter Island, the so-called kohau rongo - (“tablets speak”), covered with some kind of writing. But, unfortunately, no one has yet been able to decipher these inscriptions.

Among the modern Polynesian population of the island, another legend is known, which tells about the war that the “long-eared” and “short-eared” tribes waged among themselves. During the battle, the first were burned at the bottom of one large ditch. The outline of the moat can still be discerned in one area of ​​the island.

Soviet scientists who visited here in 1972 found that the ditch is an imprint of a volcanic flow. So, the legend, which was also verified by the famous Norwegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl, was refuted, since a fire once raged there.

Under the leadership of the author of Kon-Tiki, an expedition worked on the island in 1955-1956. She established that before the modern, Polynesian-origin population, a completely different people lived on the island, who arrived here around 380 AD. Heyerdahl spoke about his adventures while exploring the island in the interesting book “Aku-Aku. The Secret of Easter Island.”

The current inhabitants of Easter Island said that their ancestors came here around the 12th century. AD together with the king of Otu-Matua, who was forced to flee here after an unsuccessful war that the Polynesians waged among themselves. But oh ancient settlement nothing is known about the island.