Homo erectus and the Giants
This article is composed of extracts from the 2007 book:
“The Yowie Mystery - Living Fossils From The Dreamtime".Copyright (c) 2007 Rex Gilroy, Uru Publications.
Giants haunt our imagination and nightmares.
They haunt the pages of our fairy tale books, our myths and legends worldwide.
Scientists are largely silent about them, but for the admission that there were at least two forms as known from fossil teeth and jaws of massive size; namely the “Giant Java Man”, Meganthopus palaeojavanicus, argued by some to be a 3m tall giant form of Homo erectus, and the giant forest-dwelling bipedal primate, Gigantopithecus blacki. Both forms shared Java half a million years ago and earlier.
Photo Left: The first megatools recovered from the Macquarie River, Bathurst district site, on December 24th 1969. The author’s hand rests upon a jasper club weighing 16.6 kg, the other specimens, a jasper [top] and basalt ‘choppers’ weight 5.5 kg. Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2007.
And, while a grudging international scientific community accepts these beings, huge stone ‘megatools’, giant-size fossil footprints and skull remains of a variety of gigantic hominids of the past, recovered right here in Australia, continue to be ignored by our scientists who remain fixated upon the ‘politically correct’ “nobody before the Aborigines” dogma of our Stone-Age past. Yet the evidence gathered by the Gilroys continues to mount, with discoveries made by us Australia-wide, in spite of the denial of scientists who protest that “such evidence can’t possibly exist in Australia”. We beg to differ. What we now offer is an up-to-date picture of giant tool-making hominids having shared Australia with other, smaller races during Ice-Age [Pleistocene] times and earlier.
For many years we could only theorise as to the identities of the makers of the massive fossil tracks and ‘megatools’. We suspected a giant form of Homo erectus as the origin for much of this evidence, but only with the start of the new millennium did Heather and I begin to turn up fossil skeletal evidence. This was, in the form of skull and jaw fragments, and finally two huge skull endocasts, which finally enabled us to positively identify a giant form of Homo erectus as the owner of all these relics.
My quest for fossil remains of giant hominids began with the giant lower back premolar tooth mentioned earlier. I excavated the specimen at a Pleistocene fossil site at Westmead in September 1969 and although I was to turn up numbers of megatools and massive fossil hominid footprints over the years ahead, it would be 31 years before I was to find any more skeletal remains of these beings. The tooth had been mineralised into ironstone with a fine mudstone coating. It measured 52mm tall, the two roots being 18mm long by 13mm wide and in depth, the crown being 32mm long by 25mm wide. It’s owner had to have stood from 3 to 3.66m in height and been a powerfully built individual.
Then, on December 24th that year, together with my father, I was searching along an extinct [Ice-Age] course of the Macquarie River south of Bathurst, in the New South Wales central west, when projecting from a section of bank, I discovered numbers of massive stone implements; hand-axes, adzes, clubs, knives and other tools all of jasper, ranging in weights of from 5.5 to 16.5 kg. Such huge ‘megatools’ we knew, could only have been made and used by beings of immense stature and strength. Afterwards I would learn of old Aboriginal traditions hereabouts, of a race of giant men and women, the ‘Jogungs’, who once roamed the central west and who, the Aborigines say, stood two or three times the height of a normal human.
Having already uncovered a number of ancient, crude ‘mega’ choppers and hand-axes, knives and other massive tools in this wilderness, I have been able to compare them with those recovered from the Bathurst district and elsewhere. However, after having found a number of undoubted recently-manufactured megatools from the same region, and having discussed these finds with an Aboriginal elder at Bega, I was informed that the “Wadbilliga Man” [ie a population is meant here!] was most definitely still roaming the remote regions of the coastal mountain ranges.
Our quest for fossil evidence of giant Homo erectus beings continues, and those mountains that make up the Wadbilliga and Deua wildernesses draws us back time and again. I have the strong feeling that more important remains of these beings still await our discovery. We will have more to say on these beings when we study the evidence for living giant hominids of the southern New South Wales mountain ranges and elsewhere later in this book.
These giant forms of Homo erectus were known Australia-wide to the tribespeople of the Dreamtime under many different names. That some of them could still be with us is supported by not only the finds of recently-manufactured stone tools and the sightings claims of European eyewitnesses, but also freshly-made footprints. The Gilroys can vouch for the latter, because we have seen some ourselves, left in the sands of the Tuross River, by a giant that had strayed beyond the Wadbilliga forests onto the fringe of civilisation.
In the years since then I have recovered further ‘megatools’ elsewhere in New South Wales, South Australia and in central and north coastal Queensland. For example, on Wednesday 28th September 1994 Heather and I uncovered an ancient giant’s occupation site at Timor, out from Nundle and just inside the northern end of the Hunter district. The site had definitely been inhabited by giant hominids. Among the megatools we found there was one massive ‘chopper’, an immense grey basalt specimen of 20kg weight. It measured 36.5cm in length by 37cm in width and was 9cm thick. Photograph right: Aboriginal Girl wearing a Kangaroo hide Garment. Photographer Unknown. I will credit anyone who owns this photograph.
The monster-hominid that once used it would have held it with a single hand! At Sarina, on Queensland’s mid north coast, on Monday 27th November 2000, while searching the harbour front, among mangrove-covered lumps of black basalt, the remains of an ancient volcanic ash flow, I came across a heavy slab upon which was impressed a massive hominid left hand impression. Later measured at 31cm width from tip of outstretched thumb to little finger, by 28.5cm from mid finger to rear of palm [the four fingers had been bent into the [cooled] ash by an individual apparently down on all fours].
The slab was removed with difficulty back to our nearby car. We returned to this site during another expedition to this district on the afternoon of Wednesday 24th July 2002, to make an astounding discovery. In the vicinity of the earlier giant hominid hand impression, exposed on the surface amid basalt rubble we found a monstrous, black basalt club, 1.1m in length when measured, by 75cm in circumference at the head end of the club, after which it bulged out to 84cm circumference, before tapering off to a long handle measuring 55cm circumference.
This club had to have weighed at least 40kg, and afterwards we uncovered a second, somewhat larger, almost identical basalt club nearby. We also found a basalt ‘megaknife’ that measured 58cm in length by 22cm in width and at least 15kg in weight. Its handle bore three carved out finger holds that would have fitted the large fingers of the fossil hand. Here were the tools of a truly monstrous powerful being, easily 4m or more in height! The ages of the giant Homo occupation sites at Bathurst and Timor New South Wales and Sarina Queensland vary. Newcastle New South Wales geologist, the late Dr Harold Webber, after examining the Bathurst megatools in the 1970s, dated them at around 50,000 years old [which would account for Aboriginal knowledge of these beings in that district]. The Timor site may also date to around this time.
However, the Sarina specimens were originally covered by a volcanic eruption that occurred no later than 200,000 years ago at our present knowledge. Giant hominids in Australia are a scientific reality, as the foregoing evidence demonstrates, yet what is their origin? After 36 years field research I believe that I have the answer based upon all the evidence so far gathered. Giant beings can be traced back to the Pliocene period from the evidence of fossil footprints alone, therefore it may be that they were a development of either an ancestral hominid race on the way to becoming proto-Homo erectus or even proto-Homo erectus itself and it is certain that a giant form of Homo erectus appeared in early Pleistocene times.
Yet the ancestral hominids were small beings by comparison to the later proto-erectines and erectus himself. What caused such sudden increases in body proportions that led to the development of giant beings? Environmental conditions could have played a part, particularly upon isolated populations of the ancestral and other hominids, and this would have affected the genes, causing growth mutation. This growth mutation certainly appears to have been responsible for some extreme heights reached by these giant beings.
The physical appearance of the giant beings of the pre-Homo erectus era is as yet unknown to us due to the lack of skeletal remains, however this no longer applies to those of Homo erectus origin as the following fossils reveal. Having already uncovered a number of ancient, crude ‘mega’ choppers and hand-axes, knives and other massive tools in this wilderness, I have been able to compare them with those recovered from the Bathurst district and elsewhere. However, after having found a number of undoubted recently-manufactured megatools from the same region, and having discussed these finds with an Aboriginal elder at Bega, I was informed that the “Wadbilliga Man” [ie a population is meant here!] was most definitely still roaming the remote regions of the coastal mountain ranges.
Our quest for fossil evidence of giant Homo erectus beings continues, and those mountains that make up the Wadbilliga and Deua wildernesses draws us back time and again. I have the strong feeling that more important remains of these beings still await our discovery. We will have more to say on these beings when we study the evidence for living giant hominids of the southern New South Wales mountain ranges and elsewhere later in this book. These giant forms of Homo erectus were known Australia-wide to the tribespeople of the Dreamtime under many different names. That some of them could still be with us is supported by not only the finds of recently-manufactured stone tools and the sightings claims of European eyewitnesses, but also freshly-made footprints.
The Gilroys can vouch for the latter, because we have seen some ourselves, left in the sands of the Tuross River, by a giant that had strayed beyond the Wadbilliga forests onto the fringe of civilisation.
“The Yowie Mystery - Living Fossils From The Dreamtime".
“The Yowie Mystery - Living Fossils From The Dreamtime". Special Dedication. The Authors dedicate this book to the late Charles Melbourne Ward F.Z.S.; F.R.Z.S. known to his great many friends simply as ‘Mel’. Together with his wife Halley, he operated a natural history museum in the grounds of the Hydro Majestic Hotel at Medlow Bath for many years and also another established at Echo Point, Katoomba. It was ‘Mel’ who first taught me how to collect, record and study natural history specimens, beginning when I was aged 11 years old on holidays with my parents at Katoomba in 1954. Thereafter, every school holidays spent in Katoomba began with a visit to ‘Mel’ at his Medlow Bath Museum to inform him how my fledgling natural science studies were progressing!
As a result and after my parents moved from our Lansvale [western Sydney] home to Katoomba, the Gilroys and Wards became close friends. There was hardly a week which did not see me peddling my pushbike from our North Katoomba home up the Great Western Highway to see ‘Mel’ at his museum for more instruction. Mel Ward possessed a wide knowledge of the culture of the Australian Aborigines and that of the former local Blue Mountains tribes in particular.
He was also a firm believer in the “Hairy Man” and supported my researches in this regard. At my 21st birthday party, held at the Homesdale Function Centre, at Katoomba on Saturday night 8th November 1964, I well recall how my old friend, in front of a large gathering, congratulated me on my researches and the large natural science collection that I was forming and then said: “You’ve done a fantastic job Rex, BUT IT’S ABOUT TIME THAT YOU STARTED MAKING SOME BLOODY MONEY OUT OF IT” in a loud voice that brought the house down!
That following week, together with my father Mr W.F. [Bill] Gilroy, I began a search of local venues, which soon resulted in the acquisition of the lease from the Blue Mountains City Council of the Mt York Tea Rooms, outside Mt Victoria, the rest they as “is history”. Two years late, on October 6th 1966, Mel Ward was dead, having passed away in his sleep. He once said to my father that I was “the Mel Ward of Tomorrow” and I am certain that Mel would be pleased to know that I have indeed followed in his footsteps.
Mel led an adventurous life. The son of Hugh J. Ward, a famous Shakespearean actor of the early 20th century, Mel was encouraged to go on the stage by his father but Mel developed a passion for the natural sciences and his wealthy parents helped him become established. In his lifetime of achievement, Mel became recognised as a world authority on Crustaceans and an anthropologist. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales and was pleased when I too became a member of the Society in 1963. He encouraged me, not long before his death, to take on the Presidency of the Society’s Entomological section, where I served for three years from 1966 to 1969.
That he achieved so many things in the course of his lifetime researches is remarkable, because like this author, he was an amateur with not one university degree to his name! I am certain that my old friend would be delighted at the fact that, together with heather, I am now writing and publishing book on the subjects he loved and on the Yowie in particular. He taught me never to blindly follow the textbook and dare to question dogmas and not be told what to think! I have certainly followed his advice. Knowing Mel Ward as I did I know he would wholeheartedly approve of the scientific approach of this book, therefore “Mel”
This Book is for You!
Rex Gilroy - Australian Yowie Research Centre, Katoomba, NSW.
Monday 25th June 2007I also present sensible advice to any future would-be Yowie investigators. The reader will also be awed at the great many discoveries my wife Heather and I have made in all our years together in the field. I feel privileged to be the founder of Yowie research and to have encouraged other, sensible researchers to follow my example. The search for surviving relict hominids in remote, hidden regions of the world, has been called the “last great search”, and it is both a fascinating and exciting one. Rex Gilroy may be contacted at the Australalian Yowie Research Centre, PO Box 202, Katoomba. NSW 2780. Ph 02 4782 3441 or email New Email Address as of June 2009 randhgilroy44@bigpond.com on or visit our website : http://www.mysteriousaustralia.com/ or http://www.australianyowieresearchcentre.com/ or http://www.rexgilroy.com/
Newspaper Articles on Rex Gilroy's Lifetime Search for the Australian Yowie
Newspaper Articles on Rex Gilroy's Lifetime Search for the Australian Yowie
Aboriginal/Koori Names for the Australian Yowie
To present the Yowie mystery in its proper context, relict hominid evidence from south-east Asia, New Guinea, other west Pacific Islands and New Zealand is revealed, demonstrating how the ancestors of these ‘manimals’ once spread out across the earth via land-bridges that formerly joined Australia/New Guinea/New Zealand with what is now island south-east Asia to the Asian mainland.
“Hairy man” was a name given by the Aborigines to any non-Aboriginal race with which they shared this continent, but the term centred primarily upon at least three basic forms. These forms were either the height of an average human being, an enormous man-like and also ape-like form. All were known by different names Australia-wide, but all meant either “hairy man” or “great hairy man”.
