Of giants and "wee folk"

I recently watched watched an episode of PBS' Nova that discussed the diversity of dog breeds and how they got to be so numerous.  Hiedi Parker of the National Human Genome Research Project had this to say on the subject:

"If we had this kind of variation in humans, we'd have people running around the size of Barbie dolls."

Do we?

I have no evidence for what I'm about to put forth, only my own musings and "what if's" that admittedly fly in the face a bit of science and even common sense.  Then again, when has that ever stopped me?

Human mythology is replete with accounts of giants and "wee folk," such as faeries and leprechauns.  Could these be stories of beings actually seen?  Could there be the same, as Darwin would say, "variations on a similar theme" going on with human beings, just not in as great of numbers or with the imposed circumstances as dog breeding?

It may surprise you to hear this, but people to this day report sightings of abnormally tiny and large humanoids.  About.com details a case of "little people" as recent as 2003 in this report.

If indeed true, then what are they?  The faeries and elves of ancient myth?  Aliens?  Or a breed of tiny humans that have always been around and are able to live underground and beneath our humdrum notice?

Then there's the other end of the spectrum: giants.  Researcher Steve Quayle has done quite a bit of writing on this topic.  While I'm not prepared to fully embrace his postulations, it without question is interesting reading and I cannot discount it without due consideration.   Especially intriguing is Quayle's semi-fictional telling of a supposed true incident of US Special Ops battling a giant in Afghanistan (the inserted pic is the cover of Quayle's own book on the subject.)

So let the discussion begin.  Are there giants and little people among us?

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