Giant Footprint in Africa

Recently, a fellow explorer in the realm of strange and unusual sent the following link for a YouTube video (Giant Footprint).  In the video, Michael Tellinger, an author and explorer, is standing next to what appears to be a giant footprint in, according to Tellinger, solid granite.  The footprint is upright, seemingly the work of some past geological upheaval, and appears to show where a massive foot (belonging to someone over 7 meters tall) stepped in soil in the past and left this fossilized record.  The imprint even seems to depict where the toes had dug in and pushed up the mud at sometime in the past.  So, the question is... Is it Real?

To begin with, before we answer the first question, let's back up and ask a more fundamental question:  Is it at all possible that giants existed?  Now, that is a much more wizardly topic... is it not?  Ok... so, let me adjust my glasses to the end of my nose and appear more scholarly...  there... now...

Oh... let me just state that, for clarity's sake, a mythology, to me, is a religion that has, for all intents and purposes, failed.  Otherwise, it is a religion with extant believers...

Anyway...

We can look at a number of mythologies/religions to show that, at some point in the collective memory of humanity, giants imprinted themselves on our minds, suggesting that there may be some basis of fact for our large, hominid cousins we think of as giants.  For instance, Judeo-Christian scriptures speak of giants in the book of Genesis, and Norse mythology speaks about the Frost Giants (or Jotunn) from Jotunheimr that intermarried with, but often stood in opposition to, the Norse gods.  In Greek and Roman mythology, we have Titans, Cyclopes, Laistrygonians (or Laestrygonians) and myriad of other gigantic hominids revealing themselves.  Pangu (or Pan Gu) appears in oriental mythology, and in Celtic mythlogy, The giant/god Bran led the giants of Wales in battle.  Finally, giants also appear in Native American and Mayan/Incan myths as well.  I will not go into anything specifically here, unless I get asked to.  However, I think the concept of giant hominids is pervasive enough to suggest that they once walked the earth.  Perhaps they still do (bigfoot, sasquatch, yeti, that guy who played chewbacca...oh forget that last one.)  Anyway, I think we could safely argue that it is possible that giants existed.  Now, let's get back to the footprint and our first question... Is it Real?

Ok... (putting on my Science Hat).  To begin with, if the footprint is real.  It could not be in granite.  Why?  Well kids, granite is an igneous rock (and you thought third grade science would never come back to haunt you...).  It forms from magma in the very belly of the earth (ok at least a mile deep).  So, if this giant existed and the rock is granite, the giant must have put its foot in cooling magma a mile or so deep in the earth's crust (I know... a thousand hollow earthers just punched the sky).  Or, the giant had the ability to produce extreme heat as it walked (titans?).  Either way, it is somewhat doubtful that the rock is granite.  Sadly, then, this opens up a great deal of speculation since most other rock is fairly carve-able and can erode quickly (in relation to granite).

Secondly, if the print is real and depicts where the toes pushed the molten magma up... why didn't the years pushing up through the surface flatten the overhang?  Again, maybe if it was granite... but granite can be carved as well (Stone Mountain and has been for centuries, almost as long as we had senses of humor and wanted to play practical jokes.).  So, I find myself believing in the possibility of giants, but... I do not think the footprint is real.

Of course, I don't believe in Donald Trump either... I mean, his hair is more gravity defying than the toe-push in the giant footprint.

Fee Fi Fo Fum....