Article 023: Did Abraham Lincoln Know Something We Don't Today About Giants?

Lincoln wrote that the bones of “extinct giants” filled the mounds of America. Nearly 180 years later, people are still arguing about what he meant and where all those reported bones went.

Abraham Lincoln is remembered for a lot of things.

The Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation. The Gettysburg Address. Becoming one of the most studied presidents in American history.

But giants?

Probably not the first subject that comes to mind.

Yet long before Lincoln entered the White House, he wrote an extraordinary passage while reflecting on Niagara Falls. He imagined the countless generations and creatures that had looked upon the falls before him.

Then he wrote something that sounds almost unbelievable today:

“The eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the Mounds of America…”

Yep.

Abraham Lincoln actually wrote that.

This isn't a meme falsely attributed to him. The passage survives among the Abraham Lincoln papers held by the Library of Congress.

So what the hell was Lincoln talking about?

Was he referring to enormous prehistoric animals?

Did he believe giant human beings had once inhabited North America?

Was he repeating something commonly believed in nineteenth century America?

And perhaps most interestingly:

Did Lincoln's generation know about discoveries that we no longer have access to today?

Let's follow the bones.

Lincoln, Niagara Falls and the “Extinct Giants”

Lincoln's unfinished writing about Niagara is essentially a meditation on deep time.

He points out that Niagara was roaring before Columbus reached America, before biblical history as Lincoln understood it, and before countless generations of humanity.

Then come the giants.

Lincoln writes that the eyes of this mysterious species of extinct giants, whose bones supposedly filled America's mounds, had once looked upon Niagara too.

But then Lincoln gives us an enormous clue.

Shortly afterward he mentions the mammoth and mastodon, noting that fragments of their enormous bones testified that they had once lived.

That creates our first problem.

Lincoln never actually writes:

“Giant human beings lived in America.”

It's therefore possible that his “extinct giants” referred to prehistoric megafauna.

But that doesn't completely explain why he specifically connected those bones with the mounds of America.

And to understand why that matters, we have to enter the strange world of nineteenth century American archaeology.

The Mounds Were Everywhere

Long before modern archaeology developed, Americans knew that enormous artificial earthworks covered portions of North America.

Some were burial mounds.

Some were ceremonial structures.

Some belonged to enormous complexes containing geometric earthworks, plazas and other constructions.

Who built them became one of the great archaeological questions of nineteenth century America.

And people came up with practically every explanation imaginable.

Ancient migrants.

Lost civilizations.

Biblical peoples.

A vanished race.

And eventually, in some retellings, giants.

Modern archaeology has established something extremely important here: America's great mound building traditions were created by Indigenous peoples and their ancestors, representing numerous cultures across long periods of time.

The Smithsonian's own Cyrus Thomas ultimately argued against the idea that the mounds belonged to some mysterious vanished non Native race. His enormous 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology documented years of investigation.

But while that question was being debated, another kind of story kept appearing.

Very large skeletons.

The Giant Skeleton Reports

Open old American newspapers, county histories and antiquarian accounts and you'll encounter reports that sound like something from a movie.

Skeletons described as unusually tall.

Large skulls.

Enormous jawbones.

Bodies estimated at seven feet or more.

Sometimes eight feet.

And occasionally even more spectacular heights.

Then there's one of the strangest recurring details:

“Double teeth.”

Or:

“Double teeth all around.”

And sometimes:

“Double rows of teeth.”

Those phrases have become a huge part of modern American giant lore.

Today they're frequently interpreted as describing people with two complete layers of teeth, almost like an additional dental arcade behind the first.

If an authenticated eight foot human skeleton actually possessed something like that, we'd want dentists, anthropologists and geneticists crawling all over it.

But there's a major problem.

The old terminology doesn't necessarily mean what modern readers think it means.

Did These People Really Have Two Rows of Teeth?

This is where language can completely change a mystery.

Archaeologist Andy White has spent years examining historical giant reports and nineteenth century descriptions of teeth.

He found that “double tooth” was historically used for molars or premolars.

Even more interestingly, he collected 160 historical examples involving the expression “double rows of teeth.”

Only a handful involved alleged giant skeletons.

Most referred to ordinary living people, animals and other subjects. In nineteenth century usage, a “double row” could simply mean the normal opposing upper and lower rows of teeth rather than two concentric layers of teeth in one jaw.

That doesn't mean every historical dental report can automatically be dismissed.

White himself acknowledges that some descriptions could potentially involve actual additional teeth.

And humans really can develop extra teeth.

Dentists call them supernumerary teeth, and the condition is known as hyperdontia.

So unusual ancient dentition isn't impossible.

But there's a massive difference between a human with additional teeth and an entire population of giant humans possessing two complete layered sets of teeth.

For that second claim, we need skulls.

Not illustrations.

Not memes.

Not somebody repeating something somebody's grandfather supposedly saw.

Actual skulls.

And that's where this story gets frustrating.

Where Are the Giant Skeletons?

This is the question that keeps the giant controversy alive.

There are numerous historical reports describing unusually large skeletons.

But when we ask:

Where is the specimen today?

Things often get considerably murkier.

Sometimes the bones reportedly deteriorated.

Sometimes they were reburied.

Sometimes their eventual location isn't clear.

Sometimes the original account never contained enough information to identify where the remains ended up.

And sometimes modern retellings add details that weren't actually present in the earliest account.

That's a huge scientific problem.

If someone in 1875 estimated that a skeleton was eight feet tall, we can't simply assume the estimate was accurate.

Give that skeleton to a modern biological anthropologist and we can measure the long bones and reconstruct stature scientifically.

Give it to a dentist and we can determine exactly what those “double teeth” were.

Give it to a genetics laboratory and, assuming preservation and ethical and legal requirements allow, we may be able to recover ancient DNA.

We could perform CT scans, radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analysis, dental examination and ancient DNA sequencing.

Suddenly this stops being folklore.

It becomes testable science.

But first…

we need the bones.

And Then There's the Smithsonian…

Okay.

This is where a lot of people in our community are probably already yelling:

“THE SMITHSONIAN TOOK THEM!”

We've all heard some version of the story.

Unusually large skeletons are supposedly discovered.

Scientists or museums become involved.

The remains get shipped somewhere.

Then nobody seems to know where they are anymore.

And eventually the Smithsonian enters the story.

Some people believe this wasn't accidental.

According to the strongest version of the theory, institutions deliberately removed or even destroyed giant human remains because their existence would contradict the accepted history of North America.

And we'll be straight with you:

A lot of us are suspicious too.

If dozens of historical reports describe extraordinary remains and those remains supposedly entered institutional hands, it's completely reasonable to ask:

Where are they now?

But we also have to separate two things: what we suspect from what we can prove.

Because something very important about the Smithsonian story is absolutely documented.

The Smithsonian really did have a Division of Mound Exploration.

Its surviving National Anthropological Archives collection contains field reports, drawings, correspondence, news clippings and other material associated with Cyrus Thomas and numerous investigators. The records cover mound investigations across many American states.

And in 1894, Thomas published a gigantic report on the Bureau of Ethnology's mound explorations running hundreds of pages.

So when somebody says:

“The Smithsonian was investigating the mounds.”

That's not conspiracy theory.

They absolutely were.

But here's where we draw the line.

We have not found authenticated evidence establishing that the Smithsonian operated a deliberate program to collect and destroy giant human skeletons in order to conceal their existence.

That's a much larger claim.

And it requires much stronger evidence.

“Okay Smithsonian… Show Us the Bones.”

And that's basically where our position lands.

We're not interested in saying:

“Nothing unusual was ever found. Case closed.”

But we're also not going to tell you:

“The Smithsonian definitely destroyed the giants.”

when we can't prove it.

Instead:

Open the records.

Trace the collections.

Show us where the reported remains went.

And if unusual human remains still exist in museum collections, allow qualified independent researchers to examine them under appropriate ethical and legal standards.

Measure them.

Scan them.

Date them.

Study the teeth.

And where scientifically and ethically appropriate, sequence the DNA.

If they're ordinary humans whose size was exaggerated by nineteenth century newspapers?

Fine. Show us.

If “double rows of teeth” were simply nineteenth century language describing perfectly ordinary dentition?

Fine. Show us.

If somebody confused mastodon remains with human remains?

Fine. Show us that too.

But if there's something genuinely unusual sitting inside a collection somewhere?

Well…

We'd REALLY like to see that.

Our position isn't:

“THE COVER UP IS PROVEN.”

It's:

WE'RE SUSPICIOUS. NOW SHOW US THE BONES.

But What Did Abraham Lincoln Know?

And now we're right back where we started.

Lincoln wrote his strange passage decades before Cyrus Thomas's enormous Smithsonian investigation.

So where did Lincoln get the idea of “extinct giants whose bones fill the Mounds of America”?

We don't know.

We haven't found evidence that Lincoln personally excavated a giant skeleton.

We haven't found a letter in which Lincoln describes examining the skull of an eight foot human.

And we certainly haven't found evidence that President Lincoln was secretly briefed about a race of giants.

The simplest possibility remains that Lincoln was speaking poetically about extinct giant animals.

His immediate reference to mammoths and mastodons makes that interpretation impossible to ignore.

But the wording still fascinates us.

He didn't merely say:

“Large extinct animals once lived here.”

He specifically wrote:

“that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the Mounds of America.”

Why phrase it that way?

Was that simply common nineteenth century language?

Was Lincoln referencing contemporary reports about mound discoveries?

Was he conflating prehistoric animals with archaeological remains?

Or did the phrase mean something to people in 1848 that isn't immediately obvious to us today?

We don't know.

And “we don't know” is where a good investigation begins.

One Thing We DO Know About the Mound Builders

There's another part of this story that shouldn't get lost among the giants.

The old idea that America's impressive mounds must have been constructed by some mysterious non Native “lost race” didn't hold up.

Smithsonian investigations themselves eventually helped establish that the mound building traditions belonged to Indigenous North American peoples and their ancestors. Cyrus Thomas's work was central to overturning the vanished race interpretation.

And frankly, the real history doesn't need a replacement civilization to make it extraordinary.

Native societies constructed enormous earthworks, ceremonial centers and complex landscapes long before Europeans arrived.

That's remarkable on its own.

It also doesn't answer every question about every skeleton ever reportedly excavated from a mound.

Those are separate questions.

Imagine Finding One Today

Here's the experiment we'd love to see.

Imagine archaeologists discover an undisturbed ancient burial tomorrow.

The burial context is secure.

The skeleton is nearly complete.

Professional measurements demonstrate that the individual really stood somewhere around eight feet tall.

Then researchers notice genuinely unusual dentition.

Now things get interesting.

Because modern science could ask questions Lincoln couldn't have dreamed of asking.

Was the extraordinary height caused by pituitary gigantism?

Was it simply an exceptionally tall individual?

Do the teeth represent hyperdontia?

What was the person's diet?

Where did they grow up?

How old is the burial?

Who were their closest genetic relatives?

What population did they belong to?

Suddenly the internet arguments don't matter anymore.

The skeleton gets the final word.

That's why an authenticated specimen is worth a thousand newspaper stories.

So Were Giants Really Buried in America's Mounds?

Here's where we currently stand.

Abraham Lincoln really wrote about a “species of extinct giants” whose bones filled America's mounds.

Documented.

Nineteenth century America really was filled with debate and investigation concerning ancient mounds.

Documented.

The Smithsonian really created a mound exploration operation and investigated these sites extensively.

Documented.

Historical accounts really do contain strange descriptions involving large skeletons and “double teeth.”

Also documented.

But modern research shows that terms such as “double teeth” and “double rows of teeth” were used differently in nineteenth century English, meaning many modern interpretations probably aren't describing shark like layers of human teeth at all.

And what we don't currently have is the evidence that would settle the extraordinary version of the story:

A scientifically authenticated population of enormous humans with bizarre anatomy recovered from America's mounds.

Nor have we found authenticated documentation proving that the Smithsonian deliberately destroyed such remains.

Those are still claims requiring evidence.

Did Lincoln Know Something We've Forgotten?

Maybe that's not quite the right question.

Maybe the better question is:

What did Lincoln and other Americans of his generation believe had been discovered?

Because Lincoln's sentence gives us a remarkable glimpse into that world.

The United States of 1848 hadn't developed modern archaeology.

Ancient earthworks dotted the landscape.

Fossil megafauna were being discovered.

Human remains were being excavated.

Newspapers carried extraordinary stories.

People were trying to understand a continent whose ancient history they barely comprehended.

And somewhere inside that world, Abraham Lincoln put pen to paper and casually wrote about:

extinct giants…

their bones…

and the mounds of America.

Nearly 180 years later, we're still asking what he meant.

Maybe the answer is simply mammoths and nineteenth century language.

Maybe some giant skeleton reports resulted from bad measurements, exaggeration or misunderstood terminology.

Maybe unusual human remains really were discovered and subsequently lost among enormous museum collections.

And maybe there are historical records we haven't properly investigated yet.

That's why we're not closing the book.

We're opening it.

Because this one belongs in one of our favorite categories:

WEIRD ENOUGH TO INVESTIGATE. NOT PROVEN ENOUGH TO BELIEVE.

And as for the Smithsonian?

We aren't accusing anybody of a proven giant cover up.

We're just asking the question that people have been asking for generations:

WHERE ARE THE BONES?

Sources & Further Reading

Library of Congress: Abraham Lincoln Papers and the “extinct giants” passage

Smithsonian: Cyrus Thomas, 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations

Smithsonian National Anthropological Archives: Division of Mound Exploration Records

Smithsonian: Cyrus Thomas, The Problem of the Ohio Mounds

Historical Analysis: “Double Rows of Teeth” in Historical Perspective

Historical Analysis: The Modern Mythology of Giants: “Double Rows of Teeth”