Population Heights and its Relationship with Ethnicity

[Ibn Munqidh]

Hi,

I was wondering, how tall (average), would the typical man in the medieval age would be. How tall would a white caucasian man be, a mid-eastern man, an asian and so on. Are there any books which cover this topic? or atleast relate to it?

[KARTLOS]

ive a feeling that i read somewhere that richard the lionheart was 6ft and noticably taller than his contemporaries. and that this meant that he was spotted when trying to avoid capture disguised as a monk - resulting in his kidnap by leopald.

(ive just looked it up on wikipedia and they said his height was unknown as his bones have been lost, so who knows)

in general i believe that the europeans where larger and stronger than the muslims. also i think that people of turkic ethnicicty tend to be shorter than average, but bear in mind that by the time of the crusades the "turks" in asia minor were heavily interbred with those of more caucasoid ethnicity.

[Stig]

Can't tell you in feet, but as far as it has been learned to me (and I only had 2 weeks of Medieval Archaeology) the average Medieval men were just about the same size as most modern men. That's not Dutch or Scandinavian size, but the more normal size, about 1.65-1.80, some were larger some were smaller. Mind you Medieval Archaeology for me was about Holland and Northern Europe so it might be different in other countries

[Watchman]

It has fairly little to do with ethnicity anyway (not counting that ceteris paribus height tends to be hereditary). The major issue is nutrition level, and particularly access to animal protein (ie. meat and fish). QED, average heights have been climbing quite rapidly in both Finland and Japan - previously rather poor, rustic states where greater or lesser degree of malnutrition used to be commonplace - with the improvement in standards of living (and particularly eating) after WW2.

For example the relatively densely inhabited but ecologically impoverished Mediterranean region was ever short of food, particularly meat, so naturally enough the inhabitants were duly relatively short. The comparatively sparsely populated but fertile Northern Europe (as in, north of the Mediterranean zone) with its forests and access to the rich fisheries of the Atlantic was much better off that way, hence a tendency towards taller average. And the ruling classes and the rich everywhere obviously ate better than the average dirt poor peasant, and were duly somewhat taller than the average.
Plus the commoners tended to rapidly develop assorted skeletal issues from the heavy physical labour (not at all helped by the ubiquitous malnutrition) they were nigh invariably engaged in from very young age in order to put food to the family's table.

[Stig]

You'd be suprised how "healthy" the food for the normal peasant was.
Seeds, bones and such found in normal settlements show that peasant ate quite "good". Loads of good kinds of meat, sufficient grains and other veges. There are enough people today that eat far worse

[Watchman]

Ever heard of winter ? And taxes ? Bad harvests ? If there was something common folks in particular were familiar with, it was hunger. Famines of varying degrees were very much a regular occurrence.

The adoption of agriculture had the nice effect of allowing much more people to be fed than is possible with a hunter-gatherer-horticulture economy. The bad effect was the diet becoming rather one-sided (chiefly consisting of vegetable matter, and that of but a few main types) plus the unreliability of harvests, meat tending to be something of a luxury although to what degree dependent heavily on exact time, locale and sundry but in any case growing crops was very time- and labour-intensive. On the top of that the ruling classes whose developement (and for that matter that of any greater socioeconomical specialization) was made possible by the surpluses produced by agriculture invariably exacted from their subjects time and labor for numerous purposes which we'll skip over here.

Suffice to say that the average peasant tended to have rather little time and opportunity to spare on hunting or similar activities (most coastal populations tended to "farm the sea" though), and the economics on the domestic animals were invariably pretty tight. It was a fairly rare occurrence for a peasant to slaughter a pig or cow or goat (the two latter being rather valuable for their milk anyway) for his own consumption instead of selling the animal off, and when it was done it was often a question of dire necessity or a rather thriftily calculated special occasion.

In short, common people for the most part ate what might be termed primary food crops (maize, cereals, rice, whatever was appropriate for the time and place), some basic fruits and/or vegetables, and pretty much anything beyond that tended to be an uncommon luxury.

[Ibn Munqidh]

ive a feeling that i read somewhere that richard the lionheart was 6ft and noticably taller than his contemporaries. and that this meant that he was spotted when trying to avoid capture disguised as a monk - resulting in his kidnap by leopald.

(ive just looked it up on wikipedia and they said his height was unknown as his bones have been lost, so who knows)

in general i believe that the europeans where larger and stronger than the muslims. also i think that people of turkic ethnicicty tend to be shorter than average, but bear in mind that by the time of the crusades the "turks" in asia minor were heavily interbred with those of more caucasoid ethnicity.

I would agree with you here KARTLOS. In the book, "Crusades through arab eyes", the author usually emphasizes on how frankish knights looked taller than their turkish counterparts. However, not all muslims were of the same ethnicity. I would be safe in saying, for example, that the arabs are quite taller than the turks and persians, especially those of central arabia.

I really do not understand why you guys dismiss ethnicity. For example, people of SE asia, or distinctively shorter than lets say, europeans, or any other race. Western europeans, were the tallest, only to be surpassed by american generations of the early 20th century, where the average was probably about 6'2".

[Innocentius]

I would agree with you here KARTLOS. In the book, "Crusades through arab eyes", the author usually emphasizes on how frankish knights looked taller than their turkish counterparts. However, not all muslims were of the same ethnicity. I would be safe in saying, for example, that the arabs are quite taller than the turks and persians, especially those of central arabia.

I really do not understand why you guys dismiss ethnicity. For example, people of SE asia, or distinctively shorter than lets say, europeans, or any other race. Western europeans, were the tallest, only to be surpassed by american generations of the early 20th century, where the average was probably about 6'2".

Well, America is a country with welfare, and people do eat a lot of fat/junk food, while in SE Asia, most people still live as farmers, with a diet mainly consisting of...er...rice and stuff, and very little meat. Also, don't you think arabs/turks in the medieval period had a slightly different diet than western Europeans?

[Kagemusha]

I agree with Innocentius here.The height and bodysize is more related on diet rather then ethnicity. More you have meat in your diet,more protein you will get to build up muscles. Ofcourse in Far east Asia people have substituted meat as the main protein source with Soy bean.
But as far as diet goes.I believe that the worst diet in medieval Europe were on the poorer towns people rather then peasants. Ofcourse in different areas of Europe peasants had different rights. For example when hunting was preserved on nobles in England,in Scandinavia hunting and fishing were every mans right for any free man.And that was what the free peasants were doing during winter,when there was no agrarian work to do.

[Watchman]

But as far as diet goes.I believe that the worst diet in medieval Europe were on the poorer towns people rather then peasants.

A better part of genuine urban centers bought themselves Freiburg priviledges the second they could afford it, built a wall, and trained a militia just in the case the local baron tried to renegotiate the contract the old-fashioned way. Anyway, they also tried to keep domestic unrest to a minimum by distributing food if necessary to the poor - food riots suck and are bad for business after all, and nigh any decent-sized town was virtually by definition rich enough to afford it in emergencies.

And they didn't have a landlord taxing half the produce right off their larders either. Heck, the local barons probably often got rid of their surplus foodstuffs by selling them to the burghers for some cash in any case - the peasants certainly did.

Beggars still usually got to starve though. And the only thing that kept urban population curves positive in spite of the rampaging diseases, interpersonal violence and so on was a constant influx of new inhabitants - Stadtluft macht frei, as it were.

In the book, "Crusades through arab eyes", the author usually emphasizes on how frankish knights looked taller than their turkish counterparts. However, not all muslims were of the same ethnicity. I would be safe in saying, for example, that the arabs are quite taller than the turks and persians, especially those of central arabia.

Would that be the still largely nomadic Turkish tribesmen ? If so then no wonder. Nomads were never particularly large folks due to their harsh lifestyle and somewhat restricted diet. The European knights were the warrior aristocracy of a sedentary farming culture; it's pretty much a given they were by far better fed since infancy, probably even compared to the nomad aristocracy.
Mutatis mutandis that ought to apply for the Arab-Turk comparision too, of course not counting the desert nomads.

Betcha the Turks started kind of stretching when they began settling down too.

[Fisherking]

Everyone is right & wrong! Height is primarily a matter of nutrition, while body type is primarily a function of heredity. Much of the older data on height in the middle ages dealing with skeletal remains failed to take into consideration soft tissue and cartilage and put the average height at one point as low as 4 feet something…just over 1.5 m. More recent discoveries place the height of the pre-Christian Gauls as about 5´9" to 6'…near 2m. Stocky or swarthy body types do occur more frequently in a number of ethnic groups.

Animal protein is a major factor. City dwelling was new in Middle Age Europe or Northern Europe and the people tended to be shorter in cities and have a more limited diet.

American Indians are said to have had many individuals over 6' and much larger than the average English settler. This does not mean average height. The average height of a man borne in the U.S. in 1975 was 5'9" up one inch from 1955.

In the middle ages the English said that the Irish were of great size just like the Romans said the Germans & Celts before them were, But these people always say that the big guys are slow witted…. Funny how that works. People beaten by a foe usually say he was bigger than me and to get up the nerve to try again the say they are dumb.
Some cultures avoid meat or keep the intake low, Mediterranean societies fell into that category in Roman times. Beyond all of that my guess is that it would be very complex to integrate into a game without making sweeping suppositions.

[Ibn Munqidh]

Well, America is a country with welfare, and people do eat a lot of fat/junk food, while in SE Asia, most people still live as farmers, with a diet mainly consisting of...er...rice and stuff, and very little meat. Also, don't you think arabs/turks in the medieval period had a slightly different diet than western Europeans?

Cannot agree more.

[KARTLOS]

I would agree with you here KARTLOS. In the book, "Crusades through arab eyes", the author usually emphasizes on how frankish knights looked taller than their turkish counterparts. However, not all muslims were of the same ethnicity. I would be safe in saying, for example, that the arabs are quite taller than the turks and persians, especially those of central arabia.

I really do not understand why you guys dismiss ethnicity. For example, people of SE asia, or distinctively shorter than lets say, europeans, or any other race. Western europeans, were the tallest, only to be surpassed by american generations of the early 20th century, where the average was probably about 6'2".

yes obviously diet is important, but genetics (which can be lumped in with ethnicity) can be a major, major factor.

eg with the same diet it will be genetics which decide your height.

a couple of modern examples would be nordic euopeans e.g the dutch and scandinavians are on average considerably taller than sourthern europeans, eg the spanish and the portugese. i dont think you could claim this was all down to nutrition the average portugese and norwegian diet would for exapmle contain a fairly similar amount of fish.

another good example of a general trend is in india, typically south indians are much shorter than north indians and this is an ethnic trend rather than solely due to diet.

[Watchman]

Given how major effect nutrition has inside the same ethnic group though...

[The Wizard]

Medieval men could get quite large, really. In the Tower of London there's a 14th century suit of armor fitting a man that'd easily be a giant even amongst modern men (even those from Holland, yes).

Also, most Turks I've met are about as large as me, in girth, height and width (of shoulders), while Arabs and Berbers (i.e. Moroccans) tend to be either smaller, or as tall but thinner, with less bulk to fill up their torso and limbs.

Now, you might argue this was a result of the fact that most people from Turkey are probably of Anatolian instead of Central Asian descent, but still... such arguments are always a slippery slope.

[KARTLOS]

Also, most Turks I've met are about as large as me, in girth, height and width (of shoulders), while Arabs and Berbers (i.e. Moroccans) tend to be either smaller, or as tall but thinner, with less bulk to fill up their torso and limbs.

Now, you might argue this was a result of the fact that most people from Turkey are probably of Anatolian instead of Central Asian descent, but still... such arguments are always a slippery slope.

i dont think it is even an argument mate - the modern inhabitiants of turkey are ethnically not very turkic at all. they have benefited from heavy influx of european and eastern mediteranean genes.

[Watchman]

And presumably a fairly decent and balanced diet. Turkey is one the whole a tad better off both economically and socially than most of the Arab world, isn't it ?

[Kagemusha]

I personally think that talking about different races,like Germanic or Celtic race is pretty much thing of the past. When you look at the genetic lineages of the European peoples you hardly come by "races" consisting of people with same kind of genetic heritance. Rather then cultures based on language and certain technologies.For example populations of modern Finns are most closely related genetically to Modern Germans and Dutch, rather then their closest linguistic relatives Estonians. To classify people by racial figures sounds to me pretty 30´s thinking. I think the most accepted theory about the spreading of Proto-Indoeuropean cultures into Europe is still the Kurgan hypothesis.Also competing armenian and Anatolian hypothesis are quit intresting.Here are links to those:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_hypothesis

and ofcourse the classic out of the India hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_India_model

[Somebody Else]

How about gravity? It's lower farther from the equator... that'll make people taller, no?

[Ibn Munqidh]

And presumably a fairly decent and balanced diet. Turkey is one the whole a tad better off both economically and socially than most of the Arab world, isn't it ?

We're talking medieval period here.

[Watchman]

We're talking medieval period here.

And the previous post by KARTLOS, to which I was referring, didn't. Neither was your earlier post which he was quoting. Surely a quote was not required to make the connection ?

[The Wizard]

i dont think it is even an argument mate - the modern inhabitiants of turkey are ethnically not very turkic at all. they have benefited from heavy influx of european and eastern mediteranean genes.

And yet they don't look very different, overall, from, say, the Turcomen of Turkmenistan, or Uzbeks for that matter; nor do these last two look similar, in any way, to the Mongolians, who live near the place where the Altaic peoples supposedly originated from.

No, you cannot argue physical characteristics based on "race" or "ethnicity", abstract terms that don't really say much about a person at all. Much better to use real biological arguments such as diet.

We had a thread touching on this a while back and there was some refence to European heights rising during the later middle ages, in part because the Black Death and other calamities led to more of a food surplus. How non-Europeans compared is an interesting question I don't know the answer to.

Well, the Black Death hit hard all along the Mongol Silk Road, which was the very reason it reached Europe in the first place. So, following the tenents of logic, it is safe to assume that something similar happened in the Orient, though it must be said that there was a very different reaction to the Plague there than in Europe.

[Watchman]

In Europe they tended to lynch the Jews and Gypsies first.

[The Wizard]

... while in the Orient, people tended to isolate themselves and strengthen the bonds of family, clan, and tribe. This is one of the reasons why we had men like Timur tramp their boot all over the Eastern section of your map in the 14th century.

[KARTLOS]

Hi,

I was wondering, how tall (average), would the typical man in the medieval age would be. How tall would a white caucasian man be, a mid-eastern man, an asian and so on. Are there any books which cover this topic? or atleast relate to it?

bringing it back to the original question:

i dont have any specific height charts etc for how tall people were at the time, but it is my understanding from contemporary accounts that the franks were bigger than the saracens.

this would make sense based on both genetics and nutrition.

northern europeans tend to be larger and stronger than people from turkey or the middle east. This trend reflects a clear genetic influence.

from a nutritional point of view it is likely that the knights being social elites probably were well fed on a protein rich diet.