The hoax began with a doctored photo and later found a receptive online audience, perhaps thanks to the image’s unwanted religious connotations. A digitally altered photograph created in 2002 shows a reclining giant surrounded by a wooden platform, with an archaeologist with a shovel thrown in for scale.

In 2004, the “discovery” was blogged and emailed around the world (“Giant skeleton unearthed!”) and has been enjoying a resurgence in 2007. The fake photo may be obvious to most people. But the big story refuses to go away even five years later, if a steady stream of emails to National Geographic News is any indication. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

The messages come from all over the world: Portugal, India, El Salvador, Malaysia, Africa, Dominican Republic, Greece, Egypt, South Africa and Kenya. But they all ask the same question: Is it true? Helping fuel the story’s recent resurgence are a handful of media outlets that have reported the find as fact. An oft-cited March 2007 article in India’s Hindu Voice monthly, for example, said that a team from the National Geographic Society, in collaboration with the Indian military, had unearthed a giant human skeleton in India. “Recent exploration activity in the northern region of India discovered the remains of a human skeleton of phenomenal size,” the report said.

The story went on to say that the discovery was made by a “National Geographic Team (Indian Division) with the support of the Indian Army as the area falls under the jurisdiction of the Army.” The story added that the team also found tablets with inscriptions that suggest the giant belonged to a race of superhumans mentioned in the Mahabharata, a Hindu epic poem from around 200 BC. “They were very tall, large and very powerful, of “So they could wrap their arms around the trunk of a tree and uproot it,” the report said, repeating claims that initially appeared in 2004. Voice editor P. Deivamuthu admitted to National Geographic News that his publication was misled by the reports. false. is based in Mumbai, published a retraction after readers alerted Deivamuthu to the hoax, he said.

“We are against the spread of flies and rumours,” Deivamuthu added. “Also, our readers are a very intellectual class and will not tolerate nonsense.” Other blog entries, such as a May 2007 post on a site called Srini’s Weblog, cite a report supposedly published in the Times of India on April 22, 2004. But a search of that newspaper’s archive turned up no such article. Giant Photograph Variations The hoax includes the alleged discovery of a 60- to 80-foot-long (18 to 24-meter) human skeleton in Saudi Arabia.

In a popular shot, which also first appeared in 2004, an oil exploration team is said to have made the find. Here the skeleton is presented as evidence of giants mentioned in Islamic, rather than Hindu, scriptures. Websites dedicated to debunking urban legends and “netlore” became aware of the various giant hoaxes shortly after they first appeared. California-based Snopes.com, for example, noted that the skeleton image had been stolen from Worth1000, which hosts doctored photos. competitions.