The sensational headline “Giant Skeleton Uncovered—History Just Got Rewritten” is a staple of online hoaxes and pseudo-archaeology. The claim that a giant human skeleton has been discovered, and that this discovery rewrites history, has no basis in scientific reality. There has never been any credible, verifiable archaeological evidence for the existence of a race of giant humans.

The myth of giant human skeletons is often fueled by a combination of doctored photographs and the misidentification of real remains. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the massive bones of prehistoric animals like mastodons and dinosaurs were sometimes mistakenly identified as human giants. Today, with the rise of digital media, these hoaxes are typically created using manipulated images that combine a normal human skeleton with a much larger one. Such claims are consistently debunked by experts, as a skeleton of a “giant” would defy all known principles of biology and skeletal mechanics.

While the story of a giant skeleton is a myth, real discoveries of human remains have genuinely rewritten history. A prime example is the 2003 discovery of Homo floresiensis on the remote Indonesian island of Flores. This find, a small-brained, three-and-a-half-foot-tall hominin species, earned the nickname “the Hobbit.” Its discovery was truly history-rewriting because it proved that another human species had survived and coexisted with modern Homo sapiens as recently as 50,000 years ago. This real-world find, which went against everything scientists thought they knew about human evolution, is a far more compelling story than any fictional tale of a giant.