The ‘giant footprint’ of South Africa
Firewalking giant or fortuitous weathering?1
by Shaun Doyle and
Carl Wieland
Published: 14 January 2012(GMT+10)
youtube.com
Figure 1. Rock face on which the ‘giant footprint’
is situated. Notice the many cavernous weathering structures, tafoni, on the rock
face. Width of image is approx. 4 m (13 ft).
The Bible talks in a number of places about ‘giants’ in the land of
Canaan, and the pre-Flood Nephilim (please see
Return of the Nephilim?). We have recently received reports of a ‘giant
footprint’ about 1.2 m (4 ft) long in granite near Mpuluzi, near the Swaziland
border in the Mpumalanga province in north-eastern South Africa. In a recent video
posted on Youtube,2 one
Michael Tellinger, styled as a ‘scientist’, researcher, author,3 depicted this footprint as
evidence of ancient giants that walked the land. While we may not give much credence
to Tellinger’s far-fetched conjectures on the history of these giants, does
this print still provide positive evidence for ‘ancient giants’?
Weathering the ‘footprint’ hype
It is even more difficult to contemplate what would happen to the ‘giant’
who was going for a stroll barefoot in this igneous material that being soft, was
still blazing hot!
Perhaps the most important fact about this ‘footprint’ is that it is
stated to be in granite. Every geologist (or even field geological observer)—creationist
or evolutionist—agrees that granite is not a sedimentary rock, such as the
‘mud’ Tellinger refers to as having been ‘pushed up’. Granite
is an igneous rock, which becomes solid as crystals form when a previously very
hot molten magma (around 800°C) cools down. It is difficult to imagine any sort
of footprint, or fossil for that matter, surviving such a process. It is even more
difficult to contemplate what would happen to the ‘giant’ who was going
for a stroll barefoot in this igneous material that being soft, was still blazing
hot! Remember too that granite does not form on the surface of the earth but deep
underground in large plutons. So one can really rule out this giant-footprint idea
without going much further. But since this is already doing the ‘internet
rounds’, and someone is bound to ask how this shape could form if it were
not a print, we can look at some of the other features that enable an ‘offsite’
dismissal of the claim with an even greater overall degree of confidence.
youtube.com
Figure 2. The ‘toes’ of the ‘footprint’.
These are likely mini-tafoni produced because of the ledge of more resistant rock
providing favourable conditions for tafone formation. Width of image is approx. 0.7 m (2.2 ft).
When exposed on the surface, granite not uncommonly erodes in ways that can result
in some remarkable shapes
This website features photos of the famous Remarkable Rocks on South Australia’s
Kangaroo island. And
here is a photo of a similar type of cavernous weathering, in Sardinia.
The rock face with the alleged footprint has numerous such small cave-like features
called tafoni—singular tafone— (Figure 1 — pic of the rock face),
which are common weathering features in granite (See
this photo for another such example). In fact the overhanging ledge above
the ‘toes’ of the ‘footprint’ is most likely a more resistant
portion of the rock which has favoured the mini-tafoni formation (Figure 2 —
close up of the ‘toes’).
In the Tellinger video documenting this ‘footprint’, on the way up the
hill to the formation you can see lots of granite ‘flakes’ that have
broken off the larger granite body through weathering. It is not uncommon for rocks
to crack and flake in a shape that can look vaguely like a footprint. There are
also numerous little pools with water and vegetation draining a trickle of water,
often in interconnected sequence all along the slopes.
If this were a giant footprint, the creature that made it certainly would not qualify
as ever having been part of the gene pool of the human race.
In short, the single foot-like shape is nowhere near as unlikely to have occurred
by random, natural processes as it might appear at first.
Digits 2 to 4 are virtually of the same length, which is unusual in humans but consistent
with the ledge controlling tafone formation. The ‘toe’ tafoni may have
also been enhanced by human chiselling attempting to make a structure already resembling
a human print look even more so, but more investigation on site would be needed
to demonstrate this.
If all of that were not enough, the position of the ‘footprint’ doesn’t
favour it being a genuine footprint either. The ‘footprint’ is found
on an essentially vertical outcrop of granite, and as such would need to be turned
and pushed up by tectonic movement, which the video also claims has happened. However,
the granite looks like an undisturbed pluton and does not have any indications of
having been tilted up because it has no signs of metamorphism (recrystallization
of pre-existing rock caused by heat and/or pressure). Granite that has been tilted
and metamorphosed should show signs such as banding or layering. The movement of
the rock would move the minerals into darker and lighter bands of more mafic
and more
felsic layers respectively. It seems that not only would the ‘giant’
need to be able to walk on molten magma, but he would have to be able to walk up
the side of a wall of molten magma underground!
Importantly, too, all we have is a single ‘footprint’, not a trackway.
In fact, even if this print had been in sedimentary rock, and was only a little
bit enlarged, an isolated footprint impression is one of the most difficult of fossil
types to be able to positively identify as even being a fossil. There are heaps
of random shapes in rocks across the world, and sometimes one will look like a particular
animal print, or as if a toy boat had been left in the sediment, and all sorts of
similar things. It is not uncommon for rocks to crack and flake in a shape that
can look like a footprint, or even a shoeprint. This means one cannot make a case
for a one-off shape being a single footprint. It is necessary to have a series of
footprints in a trackway to make a case.
Dubious ‘giant’ physiology
The ‘footprint’ is roughly four times the size of an adult footprint.
Applying that 4x to other linear dimensions would suggest a human some 7 metres
(23 feet) tall. The Bible does mention that there were some giants in the pre-Flood
world, but ‘giant’ is a relative term. To some people groups today,
a US basketball ‘dream team’ would certainly qualify for that description.
But there are limits to the degree to which one can speculate about the size of
past members of the human race, and it is likely that the approximately 2.7-metre
(9-foot) Goliath was at or very near the size limit. Scaling up the linear dimensions
four times means that the human would have weighed around six tonnes (2D
measurements like area would be increased 16 times, but mass as an approximation
to the volume of a sphere (3D) would increase by some 64 times. Thus, though the
mass would have increased 64 times, the cross sectional area of the leg bones would
have only increased 16 times. So, in order to support the weight, the leg bone thickness
would have to be increased dramatically. Many other aspects of this ‘scaling
up’ issue would mean that the entire human body would have to have been totally
‘redesigned’, such that the person would look very, very strange indeed
to our eyes, and not just because of the ‘giant’ aspect. Further, such
a person could not have any genetic continuity with any humans on earth, for the
same reason: i.e. so many aspects of their body would have to be totally different
in order for them to be able to survive at that size in our gravity. Therefore,
if this were a giant footprint, the creature that made it certainly would not qualify
as ever having been part of the gene pool of the human race.
Summary and conclusions
This giant footprint suffers from giant problems—and numerous problems at
that. Even if this were a footprint, it wouldn’t be a human footprint
because the redesign necessary for such a creature to exist at such a size would
be so severe that the creature couldn’t have any genetic continuity with us.
However, we can dismiss the claim that this is a footprint because there is only
one print, not a trackway; it is in granite, an igneous rock that no living organism
would have a hope of leaving any sort of impression in; granite can produce some
remarkable weathering features; and the granite outcrop bears numerous tell-tale
features of patterns of weathering likely to produce a similar class of shapes at
random.
We have a tendency to see patterns and purpose in things where they don’t
exist. The textbook example is seeing recognizable shapes in clouds—we may
sometimes see a face, or a balloon, or a rabbit, or any number of shapes we are
familiar with. The same can be said of many rock formations, especially when one
considers the names of many rock formations: e.g. “Glasshouse Mountains, “Giant’s
Causeway”, “Bear Rock”, “Murphy’s Haystacks”,
etc. The list is almost endless. Trace fossils, such as footprints, are often tough
to identify in sedimentary rocks because weathering patterns can produce an amazing
array of shapes that it can be hard to know whether an impression is a footprint
or a weathering feature. However, when the print is in an out-of-place context,
such as in igneous rock, the conclusion is rather straightforward—it is not
a footprint.4 And it is
certainly not relevant to either the pre-Flood Nephilim or the post-Flood mention
of ‘giants’.
Related articles
Further reading
References
- Special thanks for quick and helpful comments from geologists
Dr Emil Silvestru and Dr Tas Walker. Return to text.
- Tellinger, M., Giant Foot Print 200 Million Yrs Old-South
Africa www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UULF2DONV6JCJUs6eK6POaxg&v=dRuxw-nZoJw,
as at 11 January 2012. Return to text.
- South African Press Association, Aliens want our gold –
UFO conference, www.citypress.co.za/SouthAfrica/News/Aliens-want-our-gold-UFO-conference-20111126,
26 November 2011. Return to text.
- Not surprisingly, perhaps, Tellinger’s other videos
reveal a very flaky New-Age/UFO type flavour. Return to text.
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