Myths regarding the past were often believed because the average layperson did not have the right education to lead them to the real answers. This leads to the one thing that surprised me the most: the ease with which some people will exploit (clueless) others for financial gain. For example, the Cardiff Giant. A couple of men had found an easy way to extract money from people willing to believe anything that supported the word of the Bible. From creating the fraudulent Giant, to turning it into a profitable tourist attraction (and scamming people out of their money), to having experts analyze (and debunk) the Giant, to Hull, Newell and Hull's confession they were able to raise an obscene amount of money from a lie. Even after the Giant was labeled a fake, people continue to pay to glimpse the “biggest hoax” (Feder). I find this fact even more astonishing than Newell and Hull's ability to deceive the American public. Honestly, the moral of this story: education is key: if the public had been better educated in the field of archeology (and history, for that matter), perhaps they wouldn't have been fooled by this “get rich” trick. I suppose it might be harder for me to say whether this was actually true, considering I'm looking at the event with the benefit of hindsight. However, I believe that educating people about the difference between reality and myth could be more beneficial in the long run