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.

[Stig]

Note that I'm not talking of cities (peasants don't live there), they can't be excavated ... and I'm talking about vertile Northern Europe

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.

Not entirely true, bad harvest didn't happen as often as most say.
Farms had place for easely 16 to 24 animals, ofcourse most where for the milk, but remember families only took care of themselves, that would mean that 6 animals for milk would be more then enough. You can do the calculating yourself I think.

[Innocentius]

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.

Ever heard of "Give us this day our daily bread? Of course, one could say that bread is kind of included when you mention cereals, but I felt it needed to be pointed out. Bread and some sort of porridge (and some basic fruits/vegetables) would have been a pretty normal meal for a "peasant"/farmer north of the Med area. It wasn't actually an "uncommon luxury" to eat fish, cheese or meat.
Well, the further north you go, the more meat you eat. Generally, the further south you went, the healthier the food went. I don't know much about this "fertile" northern Europe, but I'm pretty sure that people in common lived better down south (better climate, better agricultural possiblities). In the north, many healthy things (like fruits...) were replaced by meat. Also, a heavier (and daily) consumption of beer up north led to a shorter average lenth of life, as opposed to the wine-drinking culture of the mediterranean.

It's true however that people starved a lot, and that famine was always a living threat.

[Watchman]

Hah. Lemme tell you about northern Europe. My mother was born during WW2 to a lower middle class urban family - and you know what's one of her strongest underlying impressions when it comes to childhood memories ? Feeling hungry more or less all the time. Heck, still after the war young men entering the army as legally obliged in their late teens more often that not only started undetrgoing their actual puberty then - because in the army for the first time in their life they were getting enough to eat...

You seem to have an oddly optimistic idea of agricultural productivity and the actual quality of life it afforded the common folk before the heady days of truly modern tools and techniques. Rest assured it was a quite harsh and precarious existence in many places right until the second half of the last century. Major famines occurred as late as the second half of the 19th century ferchrissakes, despite the structures allowing grain to be shipped from the Baltic to the Mediterranean having existed at least since the 1500s...

[Sarmatian]

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.

It was even worse, because maize, rice, potatoes didn't exist in medieval europe.

Very hard life for an average peasant...

[Watchman]

I was speaking in global terms. The harsh lot of the peasant was more or less similar everywhere after all.

Rice was incidentally imported to Europe relatively early (through the Arabs in the Late Middle Ages IIRC), and quite succesfully cultivated in some marshlands and river deltas that would have taken rather mind-boggling efforts to dry out and turn into fields otherwise.

Well, the further north you go, the more meat you eat. Generally, the further south you went, the healthier the food went. I don't know much about this "fertile" northern Europe, but I'm pretty sure that people in common lived better down south (better climate, better agricultural possiblities). In the north, many healthy things (like fruits...) were replaced by meat. Also, a heavier (and daily) consumption of beer up north led to a shorter average lenth of life, as opposed to the wine-drinking culture of the mediterranean.

Not really. A somewhat higher portion of animal protein in "Northern" diet was due mostly to flat out sparser habitation and hence more wild lands and game that could be hunted (up in Scandinavia there was so few people and so much forest there was no shortage of "free" hunting ground even after you deduced the few aristocratic hunting preserves), and access to the rich Atlantic fisheries whose produce was also imported to the Med to a limited degree.

The actual fertile part of Europe is the mild zone between the sub-arctic coniferous zone in the north and the arid Mediterranean zone in the south; as a rough rule of thumb the northern limit runs more or less along the southern Baltic coastline (although at least Skåne, the southernmost tip of Scandinavia, is part of the "fertile" zone) and the southern along the Pyrenees-Alpic-Dinaric mountain line. This is where you have the "champaigne country" of France, the plains of Hungary and Poland and so on. Although much of it had to be cleared of forest before being cultivated. Anyway, a very important turning point was the developement of the heavy turning plough ("which had more impact on European history than any Napoleon" as historians are wont to observe) during the Middle Ages, which allowed the cultivation of the heavy, fertile clay soil so common in "the North".

North of this middle zone the climate gets a tad too cold for farming; it has been argued the relative unsuitability of both the climate and geography of Finland for agriculture is a major reason why the Indo-European languages (whose spread seems to have gone hand in hand with that of agriculture) never took root here and only left behind a lot of farming-related loan-words for example. Ergo, agriculture was always heavily supplemented with other sources of nutrition drawn from the vast forests, numerous rivers and the seas. Goes for about all of the Northern Coniferous Zone for that matter. One effect of this was that the population density and habitation pattern did not really allow the emergence of a large feudal aristocracy in medieval Scandinavia (with the exception of Denmark, but then it and Skåne are ecologically part of the milder zone). On the plus side there was a lot of space for domestic animals to graze in; on the minus side the harsh and long winters tok their toll on man and beast alike.

South of the mild zone is the arid Mediterranean climate, which somewhat paradoxically developed some quite dense population concentrations despite the monumental difficulties of feeding them. The soil around the Med is for the most part not very fertile and in any case more often than not chronically short of water. To scrape subsistence off this dry, dusty ground always required some quite Herculean effort of the peasants and not rarely heavy reliance on artificial irrigation; many regions were ever functionally empty of all human life for the simple reason it was next to impossible to coax enough food out of them. You can guess how much fertile space was then left free for animals to graze on... Large urban concentrations could only grow up near good anchorages and along rivers sufficiently large for shipping for the simple reason the limit where consumables had to be imported from overseas was reached quite soon; Rome could only grow into a true, vast metropole once she could draw on Egyptian grain for example. To rely on Italian cereals for its sustenance was never a viable option (land transport of bulk cargo like cereals over any greater distance being a losing proposition for numerous reasons), and neither was it for Genoa or Venice or their contemporaries.

Moreover, the Mediterranean itself is actually ecologically impoverished. Frutti di mare is in fact only available for fishing in any meaningful amounts in some few locales - a side effect of this was a conspicuous lack of large numbers of fishermen (which conversely the Atlantic and Baltic coasts were rotten with) and duly an eternal headache for any would-be naval power due to a major dearth of skilled sailors (the "merchant marines" could not really be tapped for military purposes too much, as they more often than not were quite literally the lifeline of cities). It is in general a rather peculiar sea - if not downright unique - and this is one aspect of that.

It's also actually pretty telling that the "Northern" populations could spare assorted cereals for making beverages (although "beer" back then incidentally contained rather little alcohol and lots of grain; it should be considered more "liquid bread" than an alcoholic, and this was indeed how it was used), while the Mediterraneans were obliged to hoard their cereals for bread and make wine instead when you think about it.

By the late 1500s AD the Mediterranean, or rather the distinctly overpopulated "Christian" part thereof (the "Muslim" part in turn was markedly underpopulated, and could in fact often afford to export surplus grain), was in any case forced to start importing grain from the North in bulk to feed its cities and was willing to expend some rather impressive sums on it. And this despite some very extensive and expensive projects to clear more farmland and increase production (in many places leading to large plantation-style estates). Even before that the measures cities and states took to stave off famine could have a distinct mark of ruthlessness born of desperation to them - the Venetians had no compunctions of stationing a few war galleys off the harbor of Ragusa to violently appropriate grain shipments or outright raid Campania if need be for one example, and they were by no means the only ones. The Hospitallers of Malta had similarly few scruples about bloodily boarding passing grain shipments to secure their bread as necessary for another, although they usually reimbursed the owner for the damages later... And yet famines (and the inevitably accompanying grain-hoarding, price speculation and similar callous profiteering) were commonplace.

Farms had place for easely 16 to 24 animals, ofcourse most where for the milk, but remember families only took care of themselves, that would mean that 6 animals for milk would be more then enough. You can do the calculating yourself I think.

Assuming "animals" here means for example cows, that'd be one seriously rich farmer. Probably a "big man" of the local community actually, most likely with quite a few farmhands and similar employees and tenant farmers or something along those lines. And in any case few if any peasants could actually use that much of the produce of their farms as they wished. There were taxes and rents and/or wages to be paid for example; the animals/fields/etc. and thus their produce might quite well actually be owned by someone else, and the peasant only get a small portion of the latter as his or her wage; beyond the basic necessities of living (primarily taken care of with assorted vegetables and grains) much would be sold for cash used to pay for assorted services (say, those of a blacksmith, or perhaps buying a new cow to replace one that starved during the winter, had to be put down due to old age, was eaten by wolves, or stolen by rustlers, bandits or soldiers...), or alternatively bartered for the same purpose (the common peasantry was usually only very peripherally associated with monetary economy); there might be dowries or similar random expenses to cover; taking care of and feeding the elderly was more often than not the burden of their descendants; often peasants of some means were obliged to military service if necessary and duly required to own and maintain weapons, or alternatively replace such duties with scutage to pay for a man to serve in their stead and his gear; assorted dues and fees to landowners, feudal aristocrats or otherwise, for the use of bridges, mills and so on; tolls at the city gates when going to the market...
You get the idea. Peasant economies tended to be pretty tight, even at the upper end of the spectrum. The vast majority of small-time, even free, peasantry who owned and farmed their own lands and animals doubly so, while the "rural proletariat" at the low end and serfs and other more or less "unfree" people even below them would have been quite intimately familiar with chronic shortages, poverty and hunger.

[Stig]

Assuming "animals" here means for example cows, that'd be one seriously rich farmer.

Not really, I believe about 10 of them have been excavated on just one living hill, and 10 on the next one, and 10 on the next one, etc etc

[Randarkmaan]

Regarding height and ethnicity, I have to agree with many others here that it has more to with your diet than it has to do with your ethnicity (which I don't think matters so much at all). Also several excavations of skeletons in Scandinavia have shown that iron "the mighty tall vikings" were rather short by today's standards (or compared to what they expected to find), atleast most of those skeletons they've found.

[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]

One interesting thing is that the average length was shorter than ever during the 19th century, because of the bad living conditions people suffered from.
Also, although "vikings" were short, they were actually slightly taller than most medieval scandinavians.

[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.

[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]

One interesting thing is that the average length was shorter than ever during the 19th century, because of the bad living conditions people suffered from.
Also, although "vikings" were short, they were actually slightly taller than most medieval scandinavians.

What was the average 'Karl's' height during the dark ages?

[IrishArmenian]

Height is a natural adaption to one's sorroundings. Small people keep their warmth easier, while taller people sweat more, cooling themselves down.
Average European>Average Middle Easterner>Average African.

[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.

[Innocentius]

What was the average 'Karl's' height during the dark ages?

The average lenght of a Scandinavian male in the period of about 750 - 1050 A.D. was just above 1.75 m (don't know what that is in feet and inches). Scandinavians were actually slightly taller during the period 0 - 400 A.D. (around 1.80 m) while the average medieval Scandinavian male - about 1050-1530, we count a bit differently here in Sweden - would be around 1.75 m. I don't have any statistics on females unfortunately.

Another interesting thing which of course is related to increased average lenght, is the increased average size of farm animals. An early medieval cow or horse (in Scandinavia) was only about 2/3 the size of their modern counterparts. This of course has to do with breeding ans such, but it's interesting to see.

[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.

[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?