By Derek Olson
For this article we travel to the Caribbean Sea where a small island is home to some GIANT mysteries. I sat down with author and researcher Heather Arnold, who lives on Aruba, to learn about her extensive research into the vast ancient legends concerning this land. Heather goes in depth sharing about Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci’s expedition to Aruba and why he dubbed it “The Island of Giants.” She also talks about the archaeological research she has studied and provides photographs of strange skulls. Enjoy my interview below…
Derek: How did you become interested in this topic of giants and what led you to Aruba of all places?
Heather: I spent the better part of 15 years going to medical libraries and universities, antique book shops in Europe, all these different places to get and collect the most extensive collection of archaeological reports, field reports, peer-reviewed journals, etc. – that documented the first-hand knowledge of researchers who had actually seen these bones and written about them. And it was through my archaeological research that I found out for sure that there were giants on these islands. The local population has a lot of stories about giants.
Derek: Is there any old newspaper articles you’ve discovered that reference giants of Aruba?
Heather: Yes, as a matter of fact, the Reading Eagle, which is still in publication in Pennsylvania, posted an article in 1980. And in Curaçao, a man named Chris Engels who lived here had read the stories of Vespucci. Vespucci’s letters are very specific about his interactions with the giants, what they look like, where they lived, how they interacted with other people, their weapons, their size, of course, which is why Vespucci came up with calling Aruba the island of the giants. Chris Engels then got a message from a farmer here in Aruba who was digging on his land and uncovered two massive skulls. One of the skulls actually still had its hand fused to the side of its face. And this is interesting because that’s two ways the giants were buried. So he uncovered these two skulls and he contacted Chris Engels because he knew that he was interested. And Chris sent over a team. And they came here to Aruba and they uncovered one of the largest archaic burial grounds in the entire Caribbean. They uncovered over 72 skeletons. They stopped at 72 because there were so many they didn’t even have the manpower to gather all of the remains. Most of the bones disintegrated upon leaving the earth. But at least he got the skulls. And he brought the skulls back to Curacao and tried to get archeologists and or anthropologists to look at the remains. And sadly, no one would do so.
It was so controversial, and this was in the 1970s. Even at that time, it was very controversial. No one wanted to touch it. No one believed it. Chris Engels did eventually initiate the help of the former head of the Tropical Museum of Amsterdam, and she came over to Curacao and investigated the skulls. Chris consequently put out a report called The Quest for the Giants. And in that report, documents her archaeological finds. And her archaeological finds concluded that these were skulls of giants. The hand was the real clincher because she was able to take very good measurements from that hand and she determined the size of the giants to be at least eight feet tall. And so then Chris wanted to put these skulls in the tropical museum but she wouldn’t allow them to be in the tropical museum.
So he built his own museum in Curacao, which is still there. It’s called the Curacao Museum. And in 1980, a journalist from the Reading Eagle went down to Curacao and saw the skulls, so of course that were in the basement. And by the skulls, the description was, these were skulls of the giants, a race of giants who lived on the islands, and they were believed to be over eight feet tall. And so this article, and you can find this article.
The skulls are completely missing. So this article came out and now no one can find the skulls. It’s believed maybe they’re at Leiden University in the Netherlands. I’ve talked to the curator there, the head of archeology there. I talked to the archeologists here in Aruba and no one seems to know where the skulls are.
Derek: You’ve mentioned Vespucci several times. Tell us a little bit more about his writings, his research, anything else he said about the giants that we gotta know.
Heather: So Vespucci, when he got the contract to come over from Christopher Columbus, he overtook that contract and came over, on his list to do was to go to Aruba. And so he came over with his men. And they dock the boat off the coast. They get out of the ship and in the sand, they see these giant footprints and they’re immediately intrigued. And so they begin to follow the footprints and they come across these women and they’re giants. There’s an older woman who appears to be like a grandmother, a woman who appears to be a mother, two teenage girls. He surmises to be about 15, 16 years old. And so the women beckoned the men back to their village. He noted how they lived. And it’s a pretty, what I would consider traditional, indigenous village of how they built their homes. And Vespucci just keeps marveling at the size of these women. He can’t believe how big they are, including the teenage girls.
Vespucci and his men come up with a plan to kidnap the two teenage girls and bring them as souvenirs back to Europe. And so while they’re coming up with this master plan, 36 men come back to the camp or their village, and they had apparently been on some hunting trip or something because Vespucci starts talking about not only their huge size, but the huge size of their weapons. He’s trying to figure out what they could use them for.
He doesn’t even think he can lift the weapons. That’s how big they are. And the men are a little bit aggressive. And he realizes at that moment, he has to abort mission on taking the two teenage girls and begins to head back to their ship. So they’re going back through the sand and right behind them are the giants following. And he notes in his letters, if they were kneeling, they would still be taller than me standing. I have found documentation that Vespucci was almost six feet tall. So they are going back to the ship and Vespucci documents this, it’s called the letters to the new world, of the new world. It’s a book that anyone can get, it’s in most libraries. So he’s going back to the ship and the giants are still coming into the water. So now he’s freaking out because these giants are so tall, so the height of the water is not affecting them in any way. So he makes it back to the ship and the giants are there and then they start shooting arrows at the men. The men get scared and Vespucci orders them to shoot off a cannon just to scare the giants, which it’s quite successful. And he ends the whole notation on this interaction with that he thought that day he was going to die. It was one of his scariest moments.
Watch the full interview below
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