Lincoln's Lecture on Niagara Falls and Giants

It appears that even Abraham Lincoln references this in some lecture notes.

He was waxing poetically in some lecture notes about Niagara Falls.

And he says in those notes, you can still read them today.

You can pull them up and read them now.

He says, the eyes of that extinct species of giants

whose bones fill the mounds of America have gazed upon Niagara as ours do now.

Those are from Lincoln's lecture notes.

I believe it's 1845, the date of those notes.

Oh, I got to read that.

Now, here's the contention, OK? This is interesting, because here's the contention.

The contention is that he was talking about mastodons and mammoths, megafauna.

That's what people say, because he does mention mastodon and the mammoth later on in the lecture,

in the speech.

However, what they won't tell you is before he mentions that, he's in a biblical context.

And he's talking about, he references Jesus and Moses and Adam

right before he references the giants whose bones are found in the mounds of America.

So the eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones filled the mounds of America

have gazed upon Niagara as ours do now, contemporary with the whole race of men.

Older than the first man.

Niagara is strong and fresh today as 10,000 years ago.

The mammoth and mastodon, now so long dead,

that fragments of their monstrous bones alone testify that they ever lived have gazed upon,

gazed on Niagara in that long, long time, never still, for a single moment, never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested.

That seems like he's talking about mastodon.

Well, it very well could be.

Talking about the thousands of miles of water that they all would have seen.

Well, he could be talking about Mastodons and mammoths, but look what he references before he gets to the giants.

Christ and Moses. Where is that?

He says, there's still more. It calls up an indefinite past when Columbus first sought this continent,

when Christ suffered on the cross and Moses led Israel through the Red Sea,

nay, even when Adam was made.

He's talking in a, you know, right. So here he's in a biblical context.

First came from the hand of his maker, then as now, Niagara was roaring here, the eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones filled the mounds of America.

That's what's weird. Yeah.

Now let's fill the mounds of America. So here's the question,

did, were the mounds of America filled with the bones of Mastodons and giant sloths and no, no, they weren't.

Now there have been some fragments of bones from mammoths and Mastodons found in the mounds. That's true.

They were, they looked to be ritual pieces that people were buried with that were used for ceremonial purposes or something like that.

Maybe some of them were carved ornately, but like people weren't digging up the skeletons of giant sloths and Mastodons and mammoths in the mounds routinely.

That was, it was very rare. Right.

But it seems like if you found dead giants in the mounds, that it would be more specific.

You would talk about it more than just that.

I don't know. I don't know either. The reference is ambiguous.

So we're left to wonder, is he talking about dead giants in the biblical context,

which he's clearly in a biblical context before he gets it, or is he talking about Mastodons?

And the issue is that there are giants in the Bible.

And also that when he wrote, when he penned this,

these lecture notes,

there were newspaper articles circulating in the United States announcing the discovery of the bones of giants in the mounds. Right.

So it's, it's, it's, it's up for debate.

I don't know the answer.

There's got to be somebody who works at the Smithsonian that is sick of this.

Yeah. There's gotta be someone.

We need that guy.

There's gotta be some whistleblower that just take your fucking camera phone, get down there and film something, man.