Republican Rep. Eric Burlison Believes Giant Humans Walked the Earth—and the Smithsonian Is Hiding Evidence

I warned you about this on Monday, when I made that crack about the “Ancient Aliens wing of the public health community.”

Let me introduce you to Rep. Eric Burlison, Republican of Missouri. Burlison currently serves in the burlesque known as the House Committee on Oversight, chaired by Rep. James Comer, who is what an AI congressman would look like if he were designed by marmosets.

Recently, Burlison sought to bring the committee’s oversight function down on the Smithsonian because the congressman believes the Smithsonian is hiding stuff in its basements and, believe me, what Burlison believes is down there is a whopper. From Meidas Touch News:

In June, Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican serving on the House Oversight Committee, appeared on BlazeTV’s Prime Time with Alex Stein, where he discussed his belief that giants once existed. Burlison told Stein he was scheduled to be at “NephCon 2025,” a conference focused on fringe topics including the biblical Nephilim—figures in Genesis that some interpret as the giant offspring of angels and human women.

He credited Timothy Alberino’s podcast with sending him “far down the rabbit hole,” eventually reaching claims that the Smithsonian Institution is hiding evidence, the bones of past giants that lived on the Earth. Burlison suggested that, as a member of the Oversight Committee, he could investigate the Smithsonian, and suggested first developing a strategy with Stein.

Shortly thereafter, Stein asked the congressman his thoughts on another fabled being. “Hey, Rep. They call me crazy, but I think there was giants. I believe in the Nephilim. I believe that was real, Rep. And they’re going to clip this and call you crazy. Were giants ever real in your opinion, Rep? I hope this doesn’t get you canceled.”

On the morning they were preparing to relieve me of my gallbladder, I fastened on an Ancient Aliens marathon on the TV in my hospital room. I was fascinated by this because a) I long have considered host Giorgio Tsoukalos (and his hair) to be the Most Awesome Man on Television, and b) because they already had given me the warm-up drugs, and very fine drugs they were. Whee! Area 51, dudes.

Now, as any AA fan will tell you, the Nephilim are (literally) very big in the woo-woo precincts of what passes for archaeology. Here, from Season 16, is the AA take on the subject, featuring a guy who identifies himself as an investigative mythologist—how do I get that gig?—as well as the big daddy of them all, Erich von Däniken.

As we learn from this episode, the theory is that the Nephilim were a race of giants spawned by alien Lotharios getting jiggy with human women, Central to the evidence—and we are using terms like “theory” and “evidence” quite loosely here—are the alleged bones of giants found by various miners and spelunkers. Most of these have been identified as pieces of animals like woolly mammoths, which were, in fact giants. The 1890's were a growth market in these “discoveries.” The legendary hoax involving the “Cardiff Giant,” an elaborate scam pulled off by a bunco artist named George Hull, who was seeking to ratfck the Book of Genesis in the minds of its believers. Naturally, P.T. Barnum got involved. From History:

Only a day after Marsh’s inspection, the famed circus impresario and showman P.T. Barnum viewed the giant in Syracuse and tried to buy it. When the owners turned him down, he commissioned a sculptor to build an exact replica and began displaying it at a Manhattan museum as the real thing. “What is it?” asked the ads for Barnum’s exhibition. “Is it a Statue? Is it a Petrification? Is it a Stupendous Fraud? Is it the Remains of a former Race?” Barnum’s giant drew huge crowds, even outselling the original when it finally arrived in New York that December. The man who built Barnum’s forgery soon made several other copies, and by the end of the year, a half-dozen Cardiff Giants were being exhibited around the country. “It is rather rich,” quipped the Philadelphia Inquirer, “that we should be victimized by such a fraud upon a fraud.”

Thus, apparently, according to Barnum’s (likely apocryphal) estimate, there was a minute on October 2, 1976, when Eric Burlison was born. The Oversight Committee has become the nesting ground for all manner of loons. Burlison’s colleague on that committee, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, is bughouse on the subject of UFOs, and actually got a hearing that made some actual news. For his part, Burlison has been on this case for a while. I’m inclined to let him have his investigation. Beats all hell out of Hunter Biden’s dick pics.