"Huge Human Skeleton" is not real but fake picture

[PP A Latheef]

Dears The "Huge human skeleton" is not real but fake picture. Isn't funny how the lie spread in this world and getting acceptance. "Sometimes people seem so desperate to believe in something that they lie to themselves, or exaggerate in order to make their own argument stronger." Abdullatheef   The artwork, in turn, inspired false reports of an ancient-giant discovery. IronKite, the digital artist, had nothing to do with the subsequent hoax. To create the photo collage, he said, "I kept most of the wood frame from the dig site and replaced most of the muddy dirt with ground from the skeleton picture, using a fuzzy 'brush' to fade the two so no hard lines would be visible." The picture, however, is an innocent fake. The image was lifted from Worth1000, a Web site that hosts contests for digital artists. Created by an artist using the alias IronKite, the picture placed third in a 2002 competition titled "Archaeological Anomalies 2," which asked contestants to "create a hoax archaeological discovery." "Man, this guy gets around!" said IronKite—who does not want his real name used in this story—after hearing his work had been used to back up the latest false reports. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/photogalleries/giantskeleton-pictures/index.html Perpetuating the Myth Helping to fuel the story's recent resurgence are a smattering of media outlets that have reported the find as fact. An often cited March 2007 article in India's Hindu Voice monthly, for example, claimed that a National Geographic Society team, in collaboration with the Indian Army, had dug up a giant human skeleton in India. The account added that the team also found tablets with inscriptions that suggest the giant belonged to a race of superhumans that are mentioned in the Mahabharata, a Hindu epic poem from about 200 B.C. Arabian Giant Variations of the giant photo hoax include alleged discovery of a 60- to 80-foot long (18- to 24-meter) human skeleton in Saudi Arabia. In one popular take, which likewise first surfaced in 2004, an oil-exploration team is said to have made the find. Here the skeleton is held up as evidence of giants mentioned in Islamic, rather than Hindu, scriptures. How the Image Was Made IronKite started with an aerial photo of a mastodon excavation in Hyde Park, New York, in 2000. He then digitally superimposed a human skeleton over the beast's remains. The later addition of a digging man presented the biggest technical challenge. "If you look, he's holding a yellow-handled shovel, but there's nothing on the end," IronKite said. "Originally, the spade end was there. But [it] looked like it was occupying the exact same space as the skeleton's temple, making the whole thing look fake. "Now it looks like he's just holding a stick, and people don't notice. It's funny." IronKite also altered the color of the man's clothing to create a "uniform tie-in" with the white-shirted observer peering down from the wooden platform. The two figures work to exaggerate the scale of the skeleton, he added. (Related: "Shark 'Photo of the Year' Is E-Mail Hoax" [March 8, 2005].) IronKite said he's tickled that the picture—which took only about an hour and a half to create—has generated so much Internet attention. "I laugh myself silly when some guy claims to know someone who was there, or even goes so far as to claim that he or she was there when they found the skeleton and took the picture," IronKite said. "Sometimes people seem so desperate to believe in something that they lie to themselves, or exaggerate in order to make their own argument stronger."

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P.P. Abdullatheef
Neeleswaram  - CLT