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 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 the Mississippi River.