Quote Originally Posted by Ciddler

But you'd also have to think about the fact that back then the average male was smaller than the average male today. Their eating habits were also different and they probably weren't as healthy as we are today and only lived to the age of 40 or so.
Forgot the source, but I read somewhere that human growth acceleration we see today historiclaly was not a one-way-street. Based on skeleton studies, average European male was supposedly around 6-feet tall at the beginning of the previous millenium (at the time the game starts) . Average human height supposedly went down from that point on reaching it's bottom during the Napoleonic wars.