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114-453: Brobdingnag is a fictional land, which is occupied by giants , in Jonathan Swift 's 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels . The story's main character, Lemuel Gulliver , visits the land after the ship on which he is travelling is blown off course. As a result, he becomes separated from a party exploring the unknown land. In the second preface to the book, in 1727, Gulliver laments that

228-461: A Lilliputian would be among us", indicating the same twelve to one ratio given for Lilliput was intended. This is further reinforced by hailstone being almost 1,800 times as heavy as in Europe (with 1/12 ratio, it should be 1,728). The queen's court dwarf , the shortest native on record, is not quite thirty feet tall, which, on a 1/12 scale, would make him equivalent to a person a bit below thirty inches,

342-842: A mid-ocean ridge , such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge , has volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates whereas the Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust's plates, such as in the East African Rift , the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field , and the Rio Grande rift in North America. Volcanism away from plate boundaries has been postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs from

456-443: A channel, until they reached the village of Akkrum , where they had an argument and each went his own way, thus splitting the channel into two separate waterways. Others threw up hills, or became hills themselves when they died on the spot. In several legends, giants were evil beings that threatened, robbed and killed travellers or locals; such as Ellert and Brammert , in the province of Drenthe . Medieval chivalry romances such as

570-647: A conflict with the Olympian gods called the Gigantomachy (Γιγαντομαχία) when Gaia had them attack Mount Olympus . This battle was eventually settled when the hero Heracles decided to help the Olympians. The Greeks believed some of them, like Enceladus , to lie buried from that time under the earth and that their tormented quivers resulted in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions . Herodotus in Book 1, Chapter 68, describes how

684-405: A danger of making the giants trip and die, so they offered sacrifices to that plant. There are tales of giants in the northern Chilean port town of Caldera telling of giants who play with ships moving them from one port to another. Tales of the same area also tells of giants who are able to crush humans with their feet and when laying down to sleep being so long as to reach from the mountains to

798-472: A friendly way and can even be part of human families with their offspring being portrayed as regular humans where they are often referred to as half-giants . Folklorists and historians examine the role giants are assigned in regional geomythologies . For example, Fionn mac Cumhaill is said to have built the Giant's Causeway on the island of Ireland . Per a 1965 examination in an American studies journal, "It

912-437: A graduated spectrum, with much overlap between categories, and does not always fit neatly into only one of these three separate categories. The USGS defines a volcano as "erupting" whenever the ejection of magma from any point on the volcano is visible, including visible magma still contained within the walls of the summit crater. While there is no international consensus among volcanologists on how to define an active volcano,

1026-639: A half in breadth". Gulliver tells us that Lorbrulgrud was "situated near the middle of that empire" and was three thousand miles distant from the farmer's house on the coast, that the journey took ten weeks and that they "crossed five or six rivers many degrees broader and deeper than the Nile or the Ganges ", and "there was hardly a rivulet smaller than the Thames at London Bridge ". The people of Brobdingnag are described as giants who are as tall as 60 feet high and whose stride

1140-547: A local myth has a local hill resembling a giant named as The Sleeping Giant . Folklore says the giant will awaken only if a specific musical instrument is played near the hill. Giants are also prominent in Welsh folklore . Many giants in English folklore were noted for their stupidity. A giant who had quarrelled with the Mayor of Shrewsbury went to bury the city with dirt; however, he met

1254-429: A man and a woman, were traversing the fjord near Drangey Island with their cow when they were surprised by the bright rays of daybreak. As a result of exposure to daylight, all three were turned into stone. Drangey represents the cow and Kerling (supposedly the female giant, the name means "old hag") is to the south of it. Karl (the male giant) was to the north of the island, but he disappeared long ago. A bergrisi –

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1368-538: A miniature Napoleon , representing Gulliver, while observing him through a spyglass. It was published on 26 June, five weeks after the breakdown of the Treaty of Amiens , which precipitated the Napoleonic Wars . The king's speech balloon in the top half of the print reads "My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon Yourself and Country, but from what I can gather from your own relation &

1482-443: A paper was published suggesting a new definition for the word 'volcano' that includes processes such as cryovolcanism . It suggested that a volcano be defined as 'an opening on a planet or moon's surface from which magma , as defined for that body, and/or magmatic gas is erupted.' This article mainly covers volcanoes on Earth. See § Volcanoes on other celestial bodies and cryovolcano for more information. The word volcano

1596-705: A peninsula extending west into the Pacific to the north of the Straits. In the book, Gulliver describes his voyage from England. After wintering at the Cape of Good Hope , the ship reached a latitude of five degrees south, northward of Madagascar in March 1703, and the Moluccas , "about three degrees northwards of the line " in April. From there, a storm drives the ship "about five hundred leagues to

1710-621: A shoemaker, carrying shoes to repair, and the shoemaker convinced the giant that he had worn out all the shoes coming from Shrewsbury , and so it was too far to travel. Other English stories told of how giants threw stones at each other, which was used to explain many great stones on the landscape. Giants figure in folklore and fairy tales, such as Jack the Giant Killer , The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body , Nix Nought Nothing , Robin Hood and

1824-434: A size that one man can barely carry, and are eaten by common folk if they find a beached specimen. Brobdingnag is said to be located between Japan and California , extending six thousand miles in length, and between three and five thousand miles in breadth. It is described as a peninsula, terminated to the northeast by a range of volcanoes up to 30 miles (48 km) high separating the country from unknown land beyond. It

1938-444: A statue of Jupiter, typically on horseback, defeating or trampling down a giant, often depicted as a snake. They are restricted to the area of south-western Germany, western Switzerland, French Jura, and Alsace. In folklore from all over Europe, giants were believed to have built the remains of previous civilizations. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus thought giants had a hand in the creation of megalithic monuments. Similarly,

2052-632: A volcano is largely determined by the composition of the lava it erupts. The viscosity (how fluid the lava is) and the amount of dissolved gas are the most important characteristics of magma, and both are largely determined by the amount of silica in the magma. Magma rich in silica is much more viscous than silica-poor magma, and silica-rich magma also tends to contain more dissolved gases. Lava can be broadly classified into four different compositions: Mafic lava flows show two varieties of surface texture: ʻAʻa (pronounced [ˈʔaʔa] ) and pāhoehoe ( [paːˈho.eˈho.e] ), both Hawaiian words. ʻAʻa

2166-555: A volcano is of a conical mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater at its summit; however, this describes just one of the many types of volcano. The features of volcanoes are varied. The structure and behaviour of volcanoes depend on several factors. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater while others have landscape features such as massive plateaus . Vents that issue volcanic material (including lava and ash ) and gases (mainly steam and magmatic gases) can develop anywhere on

2280-465: A volcano that has experienced one or more eruptions that produced over 1,000 cubic kilometres (240 cu mi) of volcanic deposits in a single explosive event. Such eruptions occur when a very large magma chamber full of gas-rich, silicic magma is emptied in a catastrophic caldera -forming eruption. Ash flow tuffs emplaced by such eruptions are the only volcanic product with volumes rivalling those of flood basalts . Supervolcano eruptions, while

2394-727: Is a volcanic field of over 60 cinder cones. Based on satellite images, it has been suggested that cinder cones might occur on other terrestrial bodies in the Solar system too; on the surface of Mars and the Moon. Stratovolcanoes (composite volcanoes) are tall conical mountains composed of lava flows and tephra in alternate layers, the strata that gives rise to the name. They are also known as composite volcanoes because they are created from multiple structures during different kinds of eruptions. Classic examples include Mount Fuji in Japan, Mayon Volcano in

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2508-445: Is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object , such as Earth , that allows hot lava , volcanic ash , and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. The process that forms volcanoes is called volcanism . On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging , and because most of Earth's plate boundaries are underwater, most volcanoes are found underwater. For example,

2622-658: Is believed to have been the fossilized molar of an ancient Elephantidae in his City of God , in a passage reflecting on the nature and meaning of the Noahacian deluge. The academic consideration of giants continued through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and even the early modern period. Boccaccio devoted a passage of his Genealogies of the Pagan Gods to purported archeological discoveries in Sicily that he thought might be evidence of

2736-412: Is characterized by a rough, clinkery surface and is the typical texture of cooler basalt lava flows. Pāhoehoe is characterized by its smooth and often ropey or wrinkly surface and is generally formed from more fluid lava flows. Pāhoehoe flows are sometimes observed to transition to ʻaʻa flows as they move away from the vent, but never the reverse. More silicic lava flows take the form of block lava, where

2850-554: Is derived from the name of Vulcano , a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy whose name in turn comes from Vulcan , the god of fire in Roman mythology . The study of volcanoes is called volcanology , sometimes spelled vulcanology . According to the theory of plate tectonics, Earth's lithosphere , its rigid outer shell, is broken into sixteen larger and several smaller plates. These are in slow motion, due to convection in

2964-567: Is expressed using the volcanic explosivity index (VEI), which ranges from 0 for Hawaiian-type eruptions to 8 for supervolcanic eruptions. As of December 2022 , the Smithsonian Institution 's Global Volcanism Program database of volcanic eruptions in the Holocene Epoch (the last 11,700 years) lists 9,901 confirmed eruptions from 859 volcanoes. The database also lists 1,113 uncertain eruptions and 168 discredited eruptions for

3078-517: Is generally admitted today that Paul Bunyan was a synthetic figure conceived by advertising men rather than the spontaneous product of the folk mind, yet he has been adopted by the American people with enthusiasm...Paul and his blue ox Babe are supposed to have altered the appearance of the American continent; the animal's hoof prints became the lake beds of the Northwest and from its drinking trough spilled

3192-524: Is one of the several tuyas in the area of the Tuya River and Tuya Range in northern British Columbia. Tuya Butte was the first such landform analysed and so its name has entered the geological literature for this kind of volcanic formation. The Tuya Mountains Provincial Park was recently established to protect this unusual landscape, which lies north of Tuya Lake and south of the Jennings River near

3306-608: Is reinforced by a contrast between a bad parent (the farmer) and a good one (the King). The scene of being found in Brobdingnag: emergence from the safe confines of the ship into the world of giants - screaming - being picked up and looked upon - reception by the family - is an allusion to birth. In each of the Gulliver journeys, Swift dismisses a particular aspect of high opinion that humanity holds about itself. The travel to Brobdingnag exposes

3420-417: Is surrounded on three other sides by the ocean, and the people have never been able to develop ocean-going ships. The land "has 51 cities, near 100 walled towns, and a great number of villages". Lorbrulgrud is claimed to be the capital with the king having a seaside palace at Flanflasnic. The capital "contains above 80,000 houses" and "is in length three glonglungs (about fifty four English miles) and two and

3534-447: Is ten yards. All of the other animals and plants, and even natural features such as rivers and even hail , are in proportion. The rats are the size of mastiffs , with tails "two yards long, wanting an inch", while mastiffs are "equal in bulk to four elephants ". Gulliver describes flies "as big as a Dunstable lark ", and wasps the size of partridges , with stings "an inch and a half long, and sharp as needles". This also means that

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3648-466: Is typically low in silica, shield volcanoes are more common in oceanic than continental settings. The Hawaiian volcanic chain is a series of shield cones, and they are common in Iceland , as well. Lava domes are built by slow eruptions of highly viscous lava. They are sometimes formed within the crater of a previous volcanic eruption, as in the case of Mount St. Helens , but can also form independently, as in

3762-618: The Basque Country . Giants stand for the Basque people reluctant to convert to Christianity who decide to stick to the old lifestyle and customs in the forest. Sometimes they hold the secret of ancient techniques and wisdom unknown to the Christians, like in the legend of San Martin Txiki , while their most outstanding feature is their strength. It follows that in many legends all over the Basque territory

3876-600: The Cascade Volcanoes or the Japanese Archipelago , or the eastern islands of Indonesia . Hotspots are volcanic areas thought to be formed by mantle plumes , which are hypothesized to be columns of hot material rising from the core-mantle boundary. As with mid-ocean ridges, the rising mantle rock experiences decompression melting which generates large volumes of magma. Because tectonic plates move across mantle plumes, each volcano becomes inactive as it drifts off

3990-492: The Hindu reckoning of time. According to Jainism , there was a time when giants walked upon this earth. Jain cosmology divides the worldly cycle of time into two parts or half-cycles, avasarpani (age of descending purity) and ascending ( utsarpani ). According to Jain texts , the height of Rishabhanatha , first tirthankara of the present half-cycle of time ( avasarpani ) was 500 dhanusa (longbow). In avasarpani , as

4104-671: The Mississippi River ." Fossilized remains of ancient mammals and reptiles common to the Sivalik Hills of India may have influenced aspects of the Mahābhārata that tell of battles in which "hundreds of mighty, and sometimes gigantic, heroes, horses, and war elephants are said to have died." Claudine Cohen , in her 2002 book The Fate of the Mammoth , argued that the history of human interaction with fossil bones of prehistoric megafauna

4218-510: The Old English poem The Seafarer speaks of the high stone walls that were the work of giants. Natural geologic features such as the massive basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland were attributed to construction by giants. In the Netherlands, giants are often associated with creating or forming the landscape. For instance, two giants are said to have dug

4332-688: The Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains . After giving birth to a disfigured child, the giants treated the child so poorly that the Great Spirit responded by making the land hot and desolate and allowing enemies to conquer the giants. Only two giants survived: Paiute and his wife, both of whose skin became brown from eternally living in the hot desert. Several Jupiter-Giant-Columns have been found in Germania Superior . These were crowned with

4446-599: The Spartans uncovered in Tegea the body of Orestes , which was seven cubits long ⁠ ⁠—  approximately 3.73   m, or about 12   feet 3   inches. In his book The Comparison of Romulus with Theseus , Plutarch describes how the Athenians uncovered the body of Theseus , which was "of more than ordinary size." The kneecaps of Ajax were exactly the size of a discus for the boy's pentathlon , wrote Pausanias . A boy's discus

4560-567: The Titanomachy . The Hecatoncheires are giants that have 100 arms and 50 heads who were also the children of Gaia and Uranus. Other known giant races in Greek mythology include the six-armed Gegeines , the northern Hyperboreans , and the cannibalistic Laestrygonians . There are accounts stating humans grew to the size of giants during the Satya Yuga , the first of the four cyclical ages (yugas) in

4674-792: The core–mantle boundary , 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) deep within Earth. This results in hotspot volcanism , of which the Hawaiian hotspot is an example. Volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Large eruptions can affect atmospheric temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the Sun and cool Earth's troposphere . Historically, large volcanic eruptions have been followed by volcanic winters which have caused catastrophic famines. Other planets besides Earth have volcanoes. For example, volcanoes are very numerous on Venus. Mars has significant volcanoes. In 2009,

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4788-824: The landform and may give rise to smaller cones such as Puʻu ʻŌʻō on a flank of Kīlauea in Hawaii. Volcanic craters are not always at the top of a mountain or hill and may be filled with lakes such as with Lake Taupō in New Zealand. Some volcanoes can be low-relief landform features, with the potential to be hard to recognize as such and be obscured by geological processes. Other types of volcano include cryovolcanoes (or ice volcanoes), particularly on some moons of Jupiter , Saturn , and Neptune ; and mud volcanoes , which are structures often not associated with known magmatic activity. Active mud volcanoes tend to involve temperatures much lower than those of igneous volcanoes except when

4902-621: The Anakites are described as making the Israelites seem like grasshoppers. See also Gibborim . Josephus also described the Amorites as giants in his Antiquities of the Jews , circa 93   CE, indicating that some sort of fossils may have been on display at that time: "For which reason they removed their camp to Hebron; and when they had taken it, they slew all the inhabitants. There were till then left

5016-565: The Armenian state. Hayk was part of a race of giants who helped construct the Tower of Babel . Ancient historian Movses Khorenatsi wrote, "Hayk was handsome and personable, with curly hair, sparkling eyes and strong arms. Among the giants he was the bravest and most famous, opponent of all who raised their hand to become absolute ruler over the giants and heroes." Mount Nemrut is known to have received its name from an Armenian tradition in which Nimrod

5130-709: The Biblical narrative, he appears to be significantly smaller than other giants, biblical or otherwise. The Masoretic Text version of the Book of Samuel gives his height as six cubits and one span (possibly 313–372 centimetres (10 ft 3 in – 12 ft 2 in)), while the Septuagint , the 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and the 2nd–1st-centuries BCE Dead Sea Scrolls give Goliath's height as four cubits and one span (possibly 216–258 centimetres (7 ft 1 in – 8 ft 6 in)). For comparison,

5244-607: The Giant Killer have formed the modern perception of giants as dimwitted and violent ogres , sometimes said to eat humans, while other giants tend to eat livestock. In more recent portrayals, like those of Jonathan Swift and Roald Dahl , some giants are both intelligent and friendly. Giants appear many times in folklore and myths. Representing the human body enlarged to the point of being monstrous, giants evoke terror and remind humans of their body's frailty and mortality. They are often portrayed as monsters and antagonists, but there are exceptions. Some giants intermingle with humans in

5358-599: The Nephilim were destroyed in the Flood, but Nephilim are reported after the Flood, including: The Book of Numbers includes the discouraging report by the spies sent by Moses into Canaan : "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are. (...) All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked

5472-612: The Philippines, and Mount Vesuvius and Stromboli in Italy. Ash produced by the explosive eruption of stratovolcanoes has historically posed the greatest volcanic hazard to civilizations. The lavas of stratovolcanoes are higher in silica, and therefore much more viscous, than lavas from shield volcanoes. High-silica lavas also tend to contain more dissolved gas. The combination is deadly, promoting explosive eruptions that produce great quantities of ash, as well as pyroclastic surges like

5586-693: The Prince of Aragon , Young Ronald , and Paul Bunyan . Ogres are humanoid creatures, sometimes of gigantic stature, that occur in various sorts of European folklore. Rübezahl , is a kind giant from German folklore who lived in the Giant Mountains , along with the Bergmönch , a giant mountain spirit. Antero Vipunen is a giant shaman that appears in the Kalevala , meeting the epic hero Väinämöinen to teach him creation spells. Volcano A volcano

5700-664: The Spanish Amadís de Gaula feature giants as antagonists, or, rarely, as allies. This is parodied famously in Cervantes' Don Quixote , when the title character attacks a windmill, believing it to be a giant. This is the source of the phrase tilting at windmills . Tales of combat with giants were a common feature in the folklore of the British Isles . Celtic giants also figure in Breton and Arthurian romances . In Kinloch Rannoch ,

5814-609: The USGS defines a volcano as active whenever subterranean indicators, such as earthquake swarms , ground inflation, or unusually high levels of carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide are present. The USGS defines a dormant volcano as any volcano that is not showing any signs of unrest such as earthquake swarms, ground swelling, or excessive noxious gas emissions, but which shows signs that it could yet become active again. Many dormant volcanoes have not erupted for thousands of years, but have still shown signs that they may be likely to erupt again in

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5928-464: The ancestors of the Brobdingnagians were once even larger, likely as an allusion to the medieval tendency of supporting similar claims with bones that had, around Swift's time, started being identified as belonging to elephants, mastodons and even whales . The King of Brobdingnag argues that the race has deteriorated. The language of Brobdingnag is depicted as being of a character distinctively different from that of Lilliput. Gulliver relates that, in

6042-462: The answers I have with much pains wringed & extorted from you, I cannot but conclude you to be one of the most pernicious, little-odious-reptiles, that nature ever suffer'd to crawl upon the surface of the Earth". On Mars 's largest moon , Phobos , the crater Grildrig is named because of Swift's 'prediction' of the two then undiscovered Martian moons, which his Laputan astronomers had discovered. Giant Fairy tales such as Jack

6156-400: The beginning of Part II indicates that Brobdingnag is located on the northwest coast of North America, in probably what is now British Columbia . The map shows (from south to north) Point Monterey , Port Sir Francis Drake , Cape Mendocino , Cape St. Sebastian, Cape Blanco and the semi-mythical Strait of Anián , all locations on the Pacific coast of North America, and depicts Brobdingnag as

6270-433: The biblical Samson ), Errolan (based on the Frankish army general Roland who fell dead at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass ) or even Tartalo (a one-eyed giant akin to the Greek Cyclops Polyphemus ). In Bulgarian mythology, giants called ispolini inhabited the Earth before modern humans. They lived in the mountains, fed on raw meat and often fought against dragons . Ispolini were afraid of blackberries which posed

6384-446: The boundary with the Yukon Territory . Mud volcanoes (mud domes) are formations created by geo-excreted liquids and gases, although several processes may cause such activity. The largest structures are 10 kilometres in diameter and reach 700 meters high. The material that is expelled in a volcanic eruption can be classified into three types: The concentrations of different volcanic gases can vary considerably from one volcano to

6498-419: The box becomes a vehicle for freedom (symbolized by sea, possibly, the final freedom granted by death). The land is the subject of James Gillray 's satirical hand-coloured etching and aquatint print, titled The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver.–Vide. Swift's Gulliver: Voyage to Brobdingnag . Produced in 1803, it shows a profile of George III of the United Kingdom, representing the Brobdingnagian king, holding

6612-402: The case of Lassen Peak . Like stratovolcanoes, they can produce violent, explosive eruptions, but the lava generally does not flow far from the originating vent. Cryptodomes are formed when viscous lava is forced upward causing the surface to bulge. The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was an example; lava beneath the surface of the mountain created an upward bulge, which later collapsed down

6726-446: The chief god, is the great-grandson of the jötunn Ymir . Norse mythology also holds that the entire world of men was created from the flesh of Ymir, a giant of cosmic proportions whose name is considered by some scholars to share a root with Yama of Indo-Iranian mythology. Trolls are beings that are sometimes very large. The name troll is applied to jötnar . An old Icelandic legend says that two night-prowling giants,

6840-477: The correct spelling is in fact "...  Brobding r ag (for so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobding n ag ), ... [emphasis added]". This correction by the fictional author is a device used to add an element of verisimilitude to the story. Brobdingnagian culture consists of history, poetry, mathematics and ethics, mathematics being a particular strength. Printing has been long known but libraries are relatively small. The king has

6954-449: The country is far more dangerous for people of normal human size, as evidenced by Gulliver using his hanger far more often here—namely, on attacking vermin—than in any other of the strange countries he visited, but the people are civilised. A splacknuck is an animal about 6 feet (1.8 m) long, to which Gulliver is compared in size, although it is never explained which animal it corresponds to. Fossil records are claimed to show that

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7068-499: The cycle moves ahead, height of all humans and animals decreases. The following table depicts the six aras of avasarpini – In Norse mythology , the jötnar (cognate with Old English : eotenas and English: ettin ) are often opposed to the gods. While often translated as "giants", most are described as being roughly human-sized. Some are portrayed as huge, such as some frost giants ( hrímþursar ), fire giants ( eldjötnar ), and mountain giants ( bergrisar ). The jötnar are

7182-433: The day. The discovery of the so-called Claverack Giant in colonial New York triggered giantological investigations by two important early American intellectuals, Cotton Mather and Edward Taylor . Genesis tells of the Nephilim before and after Noah's Flood . The word Nephilim is loosely translated as giants in some translations of the Hebrew Bible, but left untranslated in others. According to Genesis 7:23 ,

7296-473: The east" (this would place the ship still in Micronesia ), after which the crew determine to "hold on the same course rather than turn more northerly, which might have brought us to the north-west parts of Great Tartary ". They sighted land, which Gulliver later discovers is Brobdingnag, on 16 June 1703. Brobdingnag is claimed to be a continent-sized peninsula 6,000 miles (9,700 km) long and 3,000–5,000 miles (4,800–8,000 km) miles wide, which based on

7410-553: The enormous area they cover, and subsequent concealment under vegetation and glacial deposits, supervolcanoes can be difficult to identify in the geologic record without careful geologic mapping . Known examples include Yellowstone Caldera in Yellowstone National Park and Valles Caldera in New Mexico (both western United States); Lake Taupō in New Zealand; Lake Toba in Sumatra , Indonesia; and Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Volcanoes that, though large, are not large enough to be called supervolcanoes, may also form calderas in

7524-431: The flow is covered with angular, vesicle-poor blocks. Rhyolitic flows typically consist largely of obsidian . Tephra is made when magma inside the volcano is blown apart by the rapid expansion of hot volcanic gases. Magma commonly explodes as the gas dissolved in it comes out of solution as the pressure decreases when it flows to the surface . These violent explosions produce particles of material that can then fly from

7638-434: The formation of a submarine volcano off the coast of Mayotte . Subglacial volcanoes develop underneath ice caps . They are made up of lava plateaus capping extensive pillow lavas and palagonite . These volcanoes are also called table mountains, tuyas , or (in Iceland) mobergs. Very good examples of this type of volcano can be seen in Iceland and in British Columbia . The origin of the term comes from Tuya Butte , which

7752-445: The future. In an article justifying the re-classification of Alaska's Mount Edgecumbe volcano from "dormant" to "active", volcanologists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory pointed out that the term "dormant" in reference to volcanoes has been deprecated over the past few decades and that "[t]he term "dormant volcano" is so little used and undefined in modern volcanology that the Encyclopedia of Volcanoes (2000) does not contain it in

7866-419: The giants are held accountable for the creation of many stone formations, hills and ages-old megalithic structures ( dolmens , etc.), with similar explanations provided in different spots. However, giants show different variants and forms, they are most frequently referred to as jentilak and mairuak , while as individuals they can be represented as Basajaun ("the lord of the forests"), Sanson (variation of

7980-412: The glossaries or index", however the USGS still widely employs the term. Previously a volcano was often considered to be extinct if there were no written records of its activity. Such a generalization is inconsistent with observation and deeper study, as has occurred recently with the unexpected eruption of the Chaitén volcano in 2008. Modern volcanic activity monitoring techniques, and improvements in

8094-422: The height of the Chinese dwarf He Pingping . Gulliver also describes visiting the chief temple in Lorbrulgrud, whose tower was the highest in the kingdom, but reports he "came back disappointed, for the height is not above three thousand foot", which "allowing for the difference in size between those people and us in Europe" is "not equal in proportion to Salisbury steeple ". Outside world whales are stated to be of

8208-460: The historicity of The Odyssey 's Polyphemus . Rabelais created a wholly "fabricated giantology" for his 16th-century Gargantua and Pantagruel . Massive bones found in 1613 in France were initially assigned to Teutobochus but the examinations of them by various physicians and their publication of diverging conclusions about the bones kicked off a "pamphlet war" between anatomists and surgeons of

8322-492: The interior of a continent and lead to rifting. Early stages of rifting are characterized by flood basalts and may progress to the point where a tectonic plate is completely split. A divergent plate boundary then develops between the two halves of the split plate. However, rifting often fails to completely split the continental lithosphere (such as in an aulacogen ), and failed rifts are characterized by volcanoes that erupt unusual alkali lava or carbonatites . Examples include

8436-456: The lack of maturity: Gulliver has to be saved by Brobdingnagians not just from the danger of the oversized world around him, but from his own follies: quarreling with a "dwarf", suggesting the King to use gunpowder on his subjects, seeing his own smallness, but overlooking narrowmindedness. Brobdingnag can be interpreted as an outsider's view of England (the farther he goes away, the closer he comes to

8550-409: The largest library, which contains about one thousand volumes. The Brobdingnagians favour a clear literary style. The mismatch between body sizes of Brobdingnag giants and Gulliver is the main feature of the plot: as Dr Johnson stated with some derision in 1775, "once you have thought of big and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest". However, Swift investigates deeper: the mismatch between

8664-498: The location given by Gulliver would suggest that it covers most of the North Pacific . Contrariwise, his map shows Brobdingnag to be of a similar size and extent as the present-day Washington , and his description of the voyage puts it at a six-week voyage from the Moluccas . Swift was highly sceptical about the reliability of travel writings , and the unlikely geographic descriptions parody many unreliable travel books published at

8778-419: The mid-oceanic ridge is above sea level, volcanic islands are formed, such as Iceland . Subduction zones are places where two plates, usually an oceanic plate and a continental plate, collide. The oceanic plate subducts (dives beneath the continental plate), forming a deep ocean trench just offshore. In a process called flux melting , water released from the subducting plate lowers the melting temperature of

8892-545: The modelling of the factors that produce eruptions, have helped the understanding of why volcanoes may remain dormant for a long time, and then become unexpectedly active again. The potential for eruptions, and their style, depend mainly upon the state of the magma storage system under the volcano, the eruption trigger mechanism and its timescale. For example, the Yellowstone volcano has a repose/recharge period of around 700,000 years, and Toba of around 380,000 years. Vesuvius

9006-415: The most dangerous type, are very rare; four are known from the last million years , and about 60 historical VEI 8 eruptions have been identified in the geologic record over millions of years. A supervolcano can produce devastation on a continental scale, and severely cool global temperatures for many years after the eruption due to the huge volumes of sulfur and ash released into the atmosphere. Because of

9120-438: The mud volcano is actually a vent of an igneous volcano. Volcanic fissure vents are flat, linear fractures through which lava emerges. Shield volcanoes, so named for their broad, shield-like profiles, are formed by the eruption of low-viscosity lava that can flow a great distance from a vent. They generally do not explode catastrophically but are characterized by relatively gentle effusive eruptions . Since low-viscosity magma

9234-452: The next. Water vapour is typically the most abundant volcanic gas, followed by carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide . Other principal volcanic gases include hydrogen sulfide , hydrogen chloride , and hydrogen fluoride . A large number of minor and trace gases are also found in volcanic emissions, for example hydrogen , carbon monoxide , halocarbons , organic compounds, and volatile metal chlorides. The form and style of an eruption of

9348-867: The north side of the mountain. Cinder cones result from eruptions of mostly small pieces of scoria and pyroclastics (both resemble cinders, hence the name of this volcano type) that build up around the vent. These can be relatively short-lived eruptions that produce a cone-shaped hill perhaps 30 to 400 metres (100 to 1,300 ft) high. Most cinder cones erupt only once and some may be found in monogenetic volcanic fields that may include other features that form when magma comes into contact with water such as maar explosion craters and tuff rings . Cinder cones may form as flank vents on larger volcanoes, or occur on their own. Parícutin in Mexico and Sunset Crater in Arizona are examples of cinder cones. In New Mexico , Caja del Rio

9462-541: The ocean surface as new islands or floating pumice rafts . In May and June 2018, a multitude of seismic signals were detected by earthquake monitoring agencies all over the world. They took the form of unusual humming sounds, and some of the signals detected in November of that year had a duration of up to 20 minutes. An oceanographic research campaign in May 2019 showed that the previously mysterious humming noises were caused by

9576-420: The ocean surface, due to the rapid cooling effect and increased buoyancy in water (as compared to air), which often causes volcanic vents to form steep pillars on the ocean floor. Hydrothermal vents are common near these volcanoes, and some support peculiar ecosystems based on chemotrophs feeding on dissolved minerals. Over time, the formations created by submarine volcanoes may become so large that they break

9690-471: The ocean's surface. In the deep ocean basins, the tremendous weight of the water prevents the explosive release of steam and gases; however, submarine eruptions can be detected by hydrophones and by the discoloration of water because of volcanic gases . Pillow lava is a common eruptive product of submarine volcanoes and is characterized by thick sequences of discontinuous pillow-shaped masses which form underwater. Even large submarine eruptions may not disturb

9804-462: The one that destroyed the city of Saint-Pierre in Martinique in 1902. They are also steeper than shield volcanoes, with slopes of 30–35° compared to slopes of generally 5–10°, and their loose tephra are material for dangerous lahars . Large pieces of tephra are called volcanic bombs . Big bombs can measure more than 1.2 metres (4 ft) across and weigh several tons. A supervolcano is defined as

9918-551: The origin of most of various monsters in Norse mythology (e.g. the Fenrisulfr ) and in the eventual battle of Ragnarök , the giants will storm Asgard and fight the gods until the world is destroyed. Even so, the gods themselves were related to the jötnar by many marriages and descent; there are also jötnar such as Ægir who have good relationships with the gods and bear little difference in status to them. Odin , often regarded as

10032-425: The overlying mantle wedge, thus creating magma . This magma tends to be extremely viscous because of its high silica content, so it often does not reach the surface but cools and solidifies at depth . When it does reach the surface, however, a volcano is formed. Thus subduction zones are bordered by chains of volcanoes called volcanic arcs . Typical examples are the volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire , such as

10146-401: The own country, seen from a different perspective), while Gulliver's travel is similar to a life story of an English gentlemen of the time. While traveling to and staying at Brobdingnag, he is always confined (aboard a ship, on a boat in a water tank, in a box); to go anywhere, he needs an adult to carry him. The box might symbolize the restriction of freedom, a prison, or a coffin. In the end,

10260-534: The past, there were battles between the monarchy, nobility, and people resulting in a number of civil wars ending in a treaty. The monarchy is based on reason. City officials are elected by ballot. The King of Brobdingnag finds English institutions and behaviour wanting in comparison with his country's. Based on Gulliver's descriptions of their behaviour, the King describes the English as "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon

10374-595: The plume, and new volcanoes are created where the plate advances over the plume. The Hawaiian Islands are thought to have been formed in such a manner, as has the Snake River Plain , with the Yellowstone Caldera being part of the North American plate currently above the Yellowstone hotspot . However, the mantle plume hypothesis has been questioned. Sustained upwelling of hot mantle rock can develop under

10488-473: The princess of Tololo Pampa. If a person manages to watch the giant while he works folklore says the person will be blessed with good luck for the rest of their life. In Greek mythology , the Gigantes (γίγαντες) were (according to the poet Hesiod ) the children of Uranus (Ουρανός) and Gaia (Γαία) (spirits of the sky and the earth) where some depictions had them with snake-like legs. They were involved in

10602-468: The publisher misspelled the land's name, which Gulliver asserts is actually called Brobdingrag . The adjective "Brobdingnagian" has come to describe anything of colossal size. Brobdingnag is placed by Swift into the real world, he describes its location and geography in Part II of Gullivers Travels and provides a map showing where it is. However, the accounts are somewhat contradictory. The map printed at

10716-400: The race of giants, who had bodies so large, and countenances so entirely different from other men, that they were surprising to the sight, and terrible to the hearing. The bones of these men are still shown to this very day, unlike to any credible relations of other men." The Book of Enoch describes giants as the offspring of Watchers and women in 7:2. Hayk was known as the founder of

10830-435: The same time interval. Volcanoes vary greatly in their level of activity, with individual volcanic systems having an eruption recurrence ranging from several times a year to once in tens of thousands of years. Volcanoes are informally described as erupting , active , dormant , or extinct , but the definitions of these terms are not entirely uniform among volcanologists. The level of activity of most volcanoes falls upon

10944-464: The same to them." The Book of Joshua , describing the actual conquest of Canaan in a later generation, makes reference to such people living there in (Joshua 14:12–15 and Joshua 15:13–14). The Bible also tells of Gog and Magog , who later entered European folklore, and of the famous battle between David and the Philistine Goliath . While Goliath is often portrayed as a giant in retellings of

11058-485: The same way; they are often described as "caldera volcanoes". Submarine volcanoes are common features of the ocean floor. Volcanic activity during the Holocene Epoch has been documented at only 119 submarine volcanoes, but there may be more than one million geologically young submarine volcanoes on the ocean floor. In shallow water, active volcanoes disclose their presence by blasting steam and rocky debris high above

11172-423: The sea. In some stories the giants are black humanoids or black bulls. In southern Chile there are stories of giants said to belong to certain volcanoes such as Calbuco and Osorno . The mythical city of Tololo Pampa in northern Chile is said to be guarded by a giant known by various names including; Pata Larga , Gigante Minero and Minero Gigante . The giant enters to the mountains to obtain riches to

11286-510: The society has no known enemies. The local nobility commands the forces; firearms and gunpowder are unknown to them. The King scolds Gulliver when he tries to interest the statesman in the use of gunpowder. The laws of Brobdingnag are simple and easy to follow. There is little civil litigation . Murderers are beheaded. In Gulliver's in-character preface to the story, headed A letter from Captain Gulliver to his cousin Sympson , he specifies that

11400-622: The solidified erupted material that makes up the mantle of a volcano may be stripped away that its inner anatomy becomes apparent. Using the metaphor of biological anatomy , such a process is called "dissection". Cinder Hill , a feature of Mount Bird on Ross Island , Antarctica , is a prominent example of a dissected volcano. Volcanoes that were, on a geological timescale, recently active, such as for example Mount Kaimon in southern Kyūshū , Japan , tend to be undissected. Eruption styles are broadly divided into magmatic, phreatomagmatic, and phreatic eruptions. The intensity of explosive volcanism

11514-465: The surface of the earth". Swift intended the moral relationship between the English and Brobdingnagians to be as disproportionate as the physical relationship. The King of Brobdingnag is considered to be based on Sir William Steele , a statesman and writer, whom Swift worked for early in his career. Some critics believed it to be based on Sir William Temple. The army of Brobdingnag is claimed to be large with 207,000 troops including 32,000 cavalry although

11628-406: The surrounding areas, and initially not seismically monitored before its unanticipated and catastrophic eruption of 1991. Two other examples of volcanoes that were once thought to be extinct, before springing back into eruptive activity were the long-dormant Soufrière Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat , thought to be extinct until activity resumed in 1995 (turning its capital Plymouth into

11742-434: The theory of plate tectonics. For example, some volcanoes are polygenetic with more than one period of activity during their history; other volcanoes that become extinct after erupting exactly once are monogenetic (meaning "one life") and such volcanoes are often grouped together in a geographical region. At the mid-ocean ridges , two tectonic plates diverge from one another as hot mantle rock creeps upwards beneath

11856-444: The thinned oceanic crust . The decrease of pressure in the rising mantle rock leads to adiabatic expansion and the partial melting of the rock, causing volcanism and creating new oceanic crust. Most divergent plate boundaries are at the bottom of the oceans, and so most volcanic activity on Earth is submarine, forming new seafloor . Black smokers (also known as deep sea vents) are evidence of this kind of volcanic activity. Where

11970-437: The time which Percy Adams describes as "travel lies". Gulliver states that a nine-year-old girl named Glumdalclitch , who teaches him the language, stands "not above 40 feet tall, being small for her age". In at least two cases, he states explicitly that a Brobdingnagian's eyes are "above sixty feet" from the ground, giving a ratio of at least eleven to one. He also states that he would "appear as inconsiderable to this nation as

12084-579: The traditional protector of southwestern Iceland – appears as a supporter on the coat of arms of Iceland . According to Northern Paiute oral history, the Si-Te-Cah or Sai'i are a legendary tribe of red-haired cannibalistic giants, the remains of which were allegedly found in 1911 by guano miners in Nevada's Lovelock Cave . Furthermore, the Paiute creation story tells of "beautiful giants" who once lived between

12198-431: The underlying ductile mantle , and most volcanic activity on Earth takes place along plate boundaries, where plates are converging (and lithosphere is being destroyed) or are diverging (and new lithosphere is being created). During the development of geological theory, certain concepts that allowed the grouping of volcanoes in time, place, structure and composition have developed that ultimately have had to be explained in

12312-492: The volcano. Solid particles smaller than 2 mm in diameter ( sand-sized or smaller) are called volcanic ash. Tephra and other volcaniclastics (shattered volcanic material) make up more of the volume of many volcanoes than do lava flows. Volcaniclastics may have contributed as much as a third of all sedimentation in the geologic record. The production of large volumes of tephra is characteristic of explosive volcanism. Through natural processes, mainly erosion , so much of

12426-424: The volcanoes of the East African Rift . A volcano needs a reservoir of molten magma (e.g. a magma chamber), a conduit to allow magma to rise through the crust, and a vent to allow the magma to escape above the surface as lava. The erupted volcanic material (lava and tephra) that is deposited around the vent is known as a volcanic edifice , typically a volcanic cone or mountain. The most common perception of

12540-544: The world of Brobdingnag and Gulliver's size creates an environment akin to the one experienced by real-life babies, "Every child begins life in Brobdingnag" (cf. John Locke 's children that "are Travellers newly arrived in a strange Country, of which they know nothing"). Brobdingnagians are nice to Gulliver, trying to teach him, providing with toys, while he yearns for comfort and approval, proudly demonstrating his achievements. The enlarged world diminishes adulthood. Child analogy

12654-581: Was about 12 cm (4.7 in) in diameter, while a normal adult patella is around 5 cm (2.0 in), suggesting Ajax may have been nearly 14   feet (over 4   m) tall. The Cyclopes are also compared to giants due to their huge size (e.g.   Polyphemus , son of Poseidon and Thoosa and nemesis of Odysseus in Homer 's The Odyssey ). The Elder Cyclopes were the children of Gaia and Uranus, and later made Zeus ' "master thunderbolt", Poseidon's trident, and Hades ' "helm of darkness", during

12768-421: Was described by Roman writers as having been covered with gardens and vineyards before its unexpected eruption of 79 CE , which destroyed the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii . Accordingly, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between an extinct volcano and a dormant (inactive) one. Long volcano dormancy is known to decrease awareness. Pinatubo was an inconspicuous volcano, unknown to most people in

12882-455: Was heavily influenced by giant lore. Per Cohen, the proto-scientific study of giants appears in several phases of human history: Herotodus reported that the remains of Orestes were found in Tegea ; Pliny described a giant's skeleton found in Crete after an earthquake, and seemed to refer to evolution as the process by which giants become human-size over time; and Saint Augustine mentions what

12996-452: Was killed by an arrow shot by Hayk during a massive battle between two rival armies of giants to the south-east of Lake Van . Aztec mythology features the Quinametzin , a race of giant men created in one of the previous solar eras . They are credited with the construction of Teotihuacan . Giants are rough but generally righteous characters of formidable strength living in the hills of

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