Last entry from The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America
by Richard J Dewhurst.

..In many of the reports I came across there was conjecture as to the roots of the mound-builder race. The two top contenders posited by various authors seem to be the ancient Cretans and the ancient Scythians. In the following excerpt from Haywood’s history of Tennessee, he cites the Scythian’s large stature, burial practices involving barrows, and custom of scalping enemies as examples of their influence.

The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, 1823
BY DR. JOHN HAYWOOD
When we reflect that the Scythian nations between the Danube and the Tanais, as late as within one century of the Christian era were of a size which astonished the southern inhabitants of Europe and Asia; that they scalped their enemy; that they buried their dead in heaps of earth thrown over them with such articles as were deemed by the deceased most valuable in his lifetime; and that their tumuli, or barrows, are yet to be seen in the plains towards the upper part of the Irish and Jenesee and from the banks of the Volga to the lake Baikal; we cannot refrain from the conclusion, that this skeleton belonged to a human body of the same race, education, and notions with those who lived on the Volga, Tanais, and Obey.

The same unknown cause, which, in the course of 2000 years, has reduced the size of the ancient Scythians and their tribes, the Gauls and Germans and Sarmatians has produced the same effects here. The descendants of these giants, both in the old and new world, agree with each other in bulk, as their ancestors did with each other, which proves a uniform cause operating equally both in the old and new world. The decrease in bulk seems to have kept pace everywhere with the increase of warm temperature and with the abbreviation of longevity.

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