Giants have captured people's attention since ancient times, being the subject of numerous myths, tales, and religious stories. From the iconic Goliath in the Old Testament to the titans of Hajime Isayama, giants have always meant more to humanity than just someone who was a head taller than others. In the late 1860s, the body of a giant was found on a farm in New York State (USA) that shocked scientists and religious leaders to the core. It was called the Cardiff Giant.

In the fall of 1869, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols made a grand archaeological discovery when they were trying to dig a well on a farm outside of Cardiff, New York, USA. The two men were working for the farm's owner, William Newell; when they went about a meter deep, they came across a rock. As they removed the dirt, they saw something that looked like a human foot!

Excavating the whole body, they found a petrified man three meters tall; he would later become known as the Cardiff Giant. It wasn't a skeleton; it seemed to be made entirely of stone. He had clearly visible ribs, an Adam's apple, pores of skin and even a benevolent smile on his face. At first the workers thought it must have been an Indian who had died a long time ago, but when they looked more closely, they realized they were wrong.

Newell immediately opened the site where the giant was discovered to the public. People flocked from all over to see for themselves what religious scholars called the giant that perished in the Flood. At first, the farmer charged 25 cents for admission, but later doubled the fee as there were so many people who wanted to see the giant.

That period of history was marked by the popularity of emerging science and various hoaxes. When biblical texts were taken literally-especially in New York City, which was under the influence of rivavelism-and challenged by the ideas of Charles Darwin, ordinary people, clergy, and scientists alike were desperate to resolve the dissonance between religion and science. They often fell victim to hoaxes as they readily accepted the erased boundaries between observation and faith. Phineas Taylor Barnum, a famous American showman, offered Newell $50,000 for the giant, wanting to transport it to New York City. When the farmer refused, Barnum had agents scrutinize the statue at close range to create an exact replica. The fake Cardiff Giant proved just as popular as the original, and at first few people thought it was fake.

Of course, the original statue was also a fake, a hoax organized by Newell's friend George Hull. Both men were involved in the hoax, but it was Hull, who was an atheist, who came up with the idea after an hours-long argument with a priest about the literal interpretation of the Bible. That night, Hull lay awake all night trying to come up with the most ridiculous thing people would believe, and he finally succeeded.

Hull spent years and thousands of dollars building the Cardiff Giant. All the work was carried out in the strictest secrecy. The sculpture was made by Chicago craftsmen from a five-ton block of stone. Hull himself posed for it. When it was completed, it was doused with acid to give it an antique look.

When Hull sued Barnum, claiming that his sculpture was a copy, and the judge asked why he was so sure, he had to swallow his own lies and agree that both statues were real.

News of the pre-Flood giant's origins soon leaked out, and scientists called the story a hoax. Under mounting pressure, Newell and Hull were forced to come clean. However, Hull achieved his goal: he succeeded in proving that people were willing to believe in all sorts of nonsense, and in doing so, he made some money from the hoax.

Just seven years after this incident, a fossilized body was discovered in the mountains of Colorado, dubbed "Hard Muldoon". The giant once again turned out to be a hoax organized by George Hull! Unlike the Cardiff Giant, the Hard Muldoon was made of a mixture of clay, plaster, bones, blood and meat. After that, petrified giants started appearing everywhere. Hotels and con artists began creating their own giants as a marketing gimmick: they charged a dollar each to those willing to look at them.

Though Barnum offered $50,000 for the Cardiff Giant, by the time mustachioed and burned bodies began to appear, the market for fake giants had collapsed. A petrified man found in Wind Cave, South Dakota, was sold for just $2,000.

When the giants became uninteresting to the public, most of them were destroyed or lost to time. The giant that started it all, however, survived all adversity and returned to New York. It is currently housed at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, the tent in which Newell displayed it 150 years ago.