In the 1600s, a friar chronicled wild stories of titans who carried spears the size of tree trunks, waded all the way to Surigao, got slain by small warriors, or even traveled to Manila. Where did this titanic fascination come from—and what do stories of giants tell us about the world of our colonizers and our ancestors?

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Thumbnail art adapted from a map depicting the giant Patagonians of South America, from Gutierrez, Diego (1554-1569). “Americae sive quartae orbis partis nova et exactissima descriptio.” Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection (Library of Congress)

References:

Madarang, Catalina Ricci S. (5 May 2021). “Inches for height, hours for distance: Filipinos use our own set of measurement systems.” Interaksyon. https://interaksyon.philstar.com/trends-spotlights/2021/05/25/192465/inches-for-height-hours-for-distance-filipinos-use-our-own-set-of-measurement-systems/

Tim Reynolds (2023). “Victor Wembanyama officially listed at 7-foot, 3.5-inches tall.” Associated Press.

St. Augustine, City of God 16.8, “Whether Certain Monstrous Races of Men Are Derived from the Stock of Adam or Noah’s Sons.”

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe (2022). Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Reilly, Brandon Joseph (2013). “Collecting the People: Textualizing Epics in Philippine History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First.” [Doctoral dissertation] University of California, Los Angeles.

Morales, Resil (1997). “Imagining Giants.” In House of Memory. Anvil Publishing.

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Turban, Manon (31 December 2021). “Cartographic Monsters and the Rise of Empiricism.” XVII-XVIII [En ligne], 78.

Clark, Jordan (13 November 2017). “The Legend of the Agta, the Eastern Visayan Tree-Dweller.” The Aswang Project. https://www.aswangproject.com/agta/

Scalice, Joseph (2018). “Pamitinan and Tapusi: Using the Carpio legend to reconstruct lower-class consciousness in the late Spanish Philippines.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 49(2), p. 250-276.