If buried, the accumulated deposits upon his grave, in this low
piece of ground, during thousands of years would have been deeper
than three feet. If he were drowned, or if he lay down on the
surface of the earth to die, the flesh would have decayed and
dropped from his bones without petrification. If he were petrified
in his present locality, we ought to find other petrifications in
its immediate neighborhood, whereas all the twigs and branches
which covered and surrounded him are free from the slightest
encrustation.
Human bodies do not petrify in layers; but the strata in the
Cardiff giant, especially on the left side, are as manifest as
they are in a ledge of rocks. The eye brows, the tip of the nose,
the breast and the thigh are of the same stratum, and the layers
in the right arm are clearly of different degrees of density.
The conclusion seems irresistible that the giant is a work of art
rather than of nature. The sculpture must have been done some
years ago, or the lower parts of the figure would not have crumbled
and been washed away by the sluggish oozing of the water through
the soil.
Its age cannot antedate the present race of men, for the shape of
the head and the features are entirely modern. The old-time people,
as portrayed in the sculpture of Assyria and Egypt, had no such
heads as this. The artist evidently took a corpse for a model
and proportioned his colossal figure by careful measurement.
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