La leyenda de la criatura comienza en 1673, cuando el gigante de más de 12 pies con dos cabezas, fue capturado por marineros españoles y puesto cautivo en su barco. Los españoles lo ataron al palo mayor, pero se soltó (siendo un gigante) y durante la batalla que siguió sufrió una herida mortal. Le traspasaron el corazón con una lanza hasta su muerte. Pero antes de eso, el gigante ya se había cobrado la vida de cuatro soldados españoles.

Entonces, lo que le sucedió a Kap Dwa no está exactamente claro, pero se dice que su cuerpo naturalmente momificado fue exhibido en varios lugares y espectáculos secundarios. En 1900, la momia de Kap Dwa ingresó al circuito de terror eduardiano y, con el paso de los años, pasó de showman en showman, hasta terminar en el muelle Birnbeck de Weston en 1914.

After spending the next 45 years on display in North Somerset, England, old Kap Dwa was purchased by one “Lord” Thomas Howard in 1959, and following a few more hand-offs he ultimately ended up in Baltimore, MD, of all places. He now rests in the bizarre collection of oddities that is Bob’s Side Show at The Antique Man Ltd in Baltimore, owned by Robert Gerber and his wife. The mummified remains of Kap-Dwa are believed to be a fabricated hoax by historians, although it’s still a topic of controversial debate.

The Patagones or Patagonian giants were a race of giant humans rumoured to be living in Patagonia and described in early European accounts. They were said to have exceeded at least double normal human height, with some accounts giving heights of 12 to 15 feet (3.7 to 4.6 m) or more. Tales of these people would take a hold over European concepts of the region for some 250 years.

The first mention of these people came from the voyage of a Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan and his crew, who claimed to have seen them while exploring the coastline of South America en route to the Maluku Islands in their circumnavigation of the world in the 1520s. Antonio Pigafetta, one of the expedition’s few survivors and the chronicler of Magellan’s expedition, wrote in his account about their encounter with natives twice a normal person’s height:

“One day we suddenly saw a naked man of giant stature on the shore of the port, dancing, singing, and throwing dust on his head. The captain-general [i.e., Magellan] sent one of our men to the giant so that he might perform the same actions as a sign of peace. Having done that, the man led the giant to an islet where the captain-general was waiting. When the giant was in the captain-general’s and our presence he marvelled greatly, and made signs with one finger raised upward, believing that we had come from the sky. He was so tall that we reached only to his waist, and he was well proportioned…”Later, Sebalt de Weert, a Dutch captain associated with the exploration of the coasts of South America and the Falkland Islands south of Argentina in 1600, and his several crew claimed to have seen members of a “race of giants” while there. De Weert described a particular incident when he was with his men in boats rowing to an island in the Magellan Strait. The Dutch claimed to have seen seven odd-looking boats approaching with were full of naked giants. These giants supposedly had long hair and reddish-brown skin and were aggressive towards the crew.

Kap Dwa has both supporters and detractors: there are the taxidermy truthers and there are the people that believe this to be a real body. On the “real” side, several sources report no obvious evidence of taxidermy. One source claims that Johns Hopkins University students did an MRI on the body of Kap Dwa.

Según un artículo del Fortean Times, Frank Adey recuerda haberlo visto en Blackpool alrededor de 1960. “No había signos de suturas u otras ‘uniones’, a pesar de que el cuerpo estaba prácticamente desnudo. En la década de 1930, dos médicos y un radiólogo supuestamente lo inspeccionaron en Weston y no encontraron evidencia perceptible de que fuera falso”.

Sin embargo, las historias contradictorias sobre el origen y el estatus de Kap Dwa como atracción secundaria, por supuesto, dañan inmediatamente su credibilidad en algunos puntos. Creemos que si realmente fuera la momia de un gigante, entonces debería exhibirse en un museo de renombre y los científicos convencionales deberían analizarla mejor. Parece que aún no se ha realizado el análisis de ADN de Kap Dwa. Mientras no se realicen estas pruebas, la momia de Kap Dwa seguirá siendo un misterio.