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is his livelihood—in which case he might do it for several hours at a time. This author owns a 10-pound sledgehammer, and the only words to describe using it are misery, sweat and pain—and not necessarily in that order! It's very hard to imagine using one of these for mining, day in and day out. So, who or what could have wielded one of these 64-pound back-breakers? If we scale up the size of the ancient people to proportions that would make them capable of using this tool, the workers at this copper mine must have been giants— perhaps 12 to 18 feet [3.7 to 5.5 metres] tall, or about three times taller than an average human being of today. To put this into perspective, the average floor-to- ceiling height in an average home built in the United States within the last 50 years is just eight feet [2.4 metres]. Perhaps these are the people referred to EVIDENCE THAT GIANTS WALKED THE EARTH by Ted Twietmeyer © 2008 ear the coastal town of Llandudno N: the north of Wales, in an area that rises 220 metres above the Irish Sea, there is an ancient copper mine. Known as the Great Orme copper mine, it has been dated to the Bronze Age, about 3,500 years ago. It is believed that the mine stretches for many kilometres, with six kilometres of it already surveyed. It is known to have nine levels within it, and that over 1,700 tons of copper has been removed from it. This is quite a staggering accomplishment for a society of that era that did not use power tools, or at least power tools as we know them today. More than 2,500 sledgehammers have een recovered in the mine. The largest weighs in at around 64 pounds [29.03 ilograms]. Who on Earth could have wielded a 64-pound sledgehammer? The largest typical sledgehammer used today weighs 20 pounds [9.07 kg] (fig. 1), though sledgehammers in the 10-pound 4.5-kg] class are more commonplace. A grown man (without back trouble yet) can wield a 20-pound sledgehammer, but only for limited amounts of time; that is, unless smashing masonry and doing demolitions TEEN ALIENS APRIL — MAY 2008 NEXUS = 63 www.nexusmagazine.com