here are a number of factors in the first two paragraphs of the claim that conflict with the standard template for fake news, but the article also follows that formula in several ways. On the latter score, searches for the "American Institution of Alternative Archeology (AIAA)" point back either to the article itself or other pages referencing it, a strong indicator that organization does not exist. Furthermore, the claim regarding the Smithsonian guarding classified documents is unusual: The earliest technically classified documents in the United States go back only as far as
World War I (which America entered in 1917), whereas the discovery of giant skeletons is dated vaguely as occurring in the early 1900s. Prior to the first World War, the need to classify documents as we would today had not yet come to issue (due to America's relative then-isolated status), and such a measure would be even less likely to apply to a archaeological discovery.
An image
World News Daily Report claimed was taken in Ohio in 2011 has existed on the internet since 2008, and prior references identify the location of the picture as
Turkey, not Ohio. The date initially claimed of the image back then was that it was taken in the 1990s. Another image of "giant skulls" included with the article dated to a 2008 claim made on the web site of the
Coast to Coast radio program. (Misattributed images attached to news articles are almost always red flags the claims made in those articles are shaky.)
Yet another image frequently attached to other versions of the claim depict
Edouard Beaupre, a French-Canadian man afflicted with gigantism who died in 1904. A sideshow celebrity at the time, Beaupre's existence was hardly a secret and certainly not classified by the Smithsonian Institution. Finally, no such "Supreme Court" decision exists; and if it did, it would have been a matter of public record and widely reported in mainstream publications due to its notability.
Unlike most fake news stories, the giant skeleton claim is an extant long-running rumor that refuses to stay dead rather than a recently invented falsehood.
National Geographic has been battling the hoax since at least 2002, and stated in
2007:
The National Geographic Society has not discovered ancient giant humans, despite rampant reports and pictures.
The hoax began with a doctored photo and later found a receptive online audience — thanks perhaps to the image's unintended religious connotations.
A digitally altered photograph created in 2002 shows a
reclining giant surrounded by a wooden platform — with a shovel-wielding archaeologist thrown in for scale.
By 2004 the "discovery" was being blogged and emailed all over the world — "Giant Skeleton Unearthed!" — and it's been enjoying a revival in 2007.
