Well, if it’s 11 January, that must mean… YES! It’s the 411th anniversary of the discovery of the grave of Teutobochus, legendary giant and king of the Teutons, who was captured by the Romans in 105 BCE.
The skeleton was 25 feet tall, and ten feet across its shoulders, proving beyond any doubt that giants had once roamed the Earth, and that this one had come to rest in Dauphiné, south-eastern France.
It was discovered by people digging in a field which had apparently been known for centuries as Le Terroir du Géant, and had teeth “the size of an ox’s hoof”. Local surgeon Pierre Mazurier was summoned to investigate.
He was able to verify the remains due to a headstone bearing the legend Teutobochus Rex, and some ornaments and urns. He used these to bribe local worthies, who allowed him to take the remains to the fame that was beckoning them in Paris.
Quantities of cash duly started to make their welcome way to M. Mazurier, and Teutobochus found himself at Fontainebleau for a meeting with fellow monarch Louis XIII.
Mazurier wanted to prolong his 15 minutes, though, and a popular pamphlet duly emerged, followed by a whole book of Gigantostéologie ou Discours des Os de Géants by fellow surgeon, Nicolas Habicot.
Unfortunately, Habicot was a somewhat combative personality, and not the only scientist in town. The Queen Mother’s personal physician and prominent anatomist Jean Riolan, was, too, and he wasn’t convinced.
Riolan insisted on pesky, new-fangled ideas like observation and measurement, rather than unevidenced assertion, and said these were the bones of an elephant, although he did (a) suggest it might be one of Hannibal’s, and (b) add:
To be fair to him, most people in the 17th century hadn’t seen an elephant, and he would at least have been basing his idea of what one looked like on books he’d read. That wasn’t the only way he was ahead of Mazurier and Habicot, though.
According to Jan Bondeson’s A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, Riolan also sent a spy to Dauphiné, and the “blabbering workmen” there said Mazurier was a fraud, who’d made the grave ornaments and inscriptions “with his own hands”.
The dispute rapidly descended into a massive feud, with each side issuing more and more vituperative pamphlets — at least 17 of which survive in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Apparently, Habicot was ruder, but (and this is also from Bondeson) Riolan had his moments, too:
Habicot was worse, but Riolan also demonstrated considerable skill in the art of vituperation. He was apparently of the firm opinion that not only Habicot and Mazuyer but all French surgeons were little better than low-born horse doctors, ignorant of anatomy and osteology. Unwisely, he even put in some satirical remarks about that famous doyen of French surgery Ambroise Paré. Several other surgeons went over to Habicot’s side, and according to one publication, Riolan was forced to cower behind the shuttered panes of his Paris house while apprentices bayed for his blood on the pavement outside, eager to restore the honor of Paré, Habicot, and King Teutobochus.
People began to be convinced by Riolan’s arguments, to the extent that Mazurier’s earnings suffered, as smaller and smaller audiences turned up to see his dubious skeleton as it toured the country. Eventually, he declared bankruptcy and went back to his village, leaving the skeleton behind in lieu of rent.
21 years later, antiquary Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc asked another doctor in the area, a M. Nivolet, to investigate, and this physician sent him one of the coins found in the ‘grave’.
In the 19th century, zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville examined the bones and said they came from a mastodon…
…and in 1984 paleontologist Léonard Ginsburg said it was most likely a Deinotherium:
…but either way, it was a proboscidean — a word derived from the Latin proboscis, meaning ‘animal with a big schnozz’ — and the idea of giants is complete balls. Sorry.
