short ancestors

[Boyar Son]

I heard people were much shorter centuries ago. Is this true?

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I'm pretty sure they were, and I have heard that improved nutrition is one of the main reason people are taller now than centuries ago, but I'm not an expert on the topic.

[Boyar Son]

so, they're like, indian short?

[Watchman]

They were like short like in back around WW2 Japanese Imperial Guard units had an entry height requirement of 155cm - and that was stricter than the humbler corps had. Having mainly rice to eat does that.

These days the younger Japanese tourists, of around my age or thereabouts (ie. mid-twenties) I see coming to the museum I work in are quite often around my height - and I'm a bit over 180cm. Heck, surprisingly many of the young women come close to my height too. The middle-aged ones, about the parents of the above, tend to be noticeably shorter.

The hike in average heights has been about as startling here in Finland within about the last century or half. Increased standards of living and by far improved nutrition levels do wonders.

[The Wizard]

The nobility and other upper castes could reach heights that are normal, or even extraordinary, for today. In the Tower of London's armory, for instance, there's a suit of armor from the 14th century for a guy that stood at least three, maybe four heads taller than I am (1.80-1.85 m). A real giant. I reckon the suit stood at some 2.3 meters height.

[Watchman]

Well, if we assume the Philistine champion Goliath (of Old Testament fame) was similarly an unusually tall man, if not suffering from genetic gigantism...

But yeah, the upper classes were generally taller. For one thing they ate better on the whole (they might suffer from any number of vitamin deficiencies etc. like everyone else, but they didn't actually go hungry); for another their diet tended to include rather more meat, fish and similar "luxury" articles that as it happens are among the primary sources of animal protein, which as it happens is about the single most central building block the metabolism uses for height growth...

[The Wizard]

Yep. You should keep in mind, though, that on average, the nobility and other such warrior castes in societies, including our own European one, were on average smaller than we were. If you're the average Dutch height of 1.85 m, you'd probably be one of the tallest knights out there, I'd wager.

[Watchman]

Quite likely - but then again, as it has been said the average middle-class Westerner these days lives in more luxury than a Medieval king...

Still, them contemporary records often remark on uncommonly tall people (who for some reason very commonly tend to earn the unimaginative sobriquet "the Tall"...).

[Stig]

People weren't that much shorter. Look at what some people eat nowadays: fastfood. The people in medieval times had a better diet.
But yes they were a bit shorter, don't expect big differences tho, it will have been like 5-10 cm, maybe 15 with a bit of luck.

I'm 1.86-1.88 (don't know for sure). When I was in London I slept in a 1.80m bed, because they considered that a normal size. When I was in Italy I could look over the heads of most of the people with ease.
People differ, even nowadays.



Take the Flores Human for example, that was a real dwarf, simply because it didn't need to be tall (it's a palaeolithic human tho). Or the Neanderthalers, they had bigger brains than us.

[Boyar Son]

1.80 centimeter normal over their?

so 500 years ago it would be 1.70? (no hieght in feet?)

[The Wizard]

The average Roman was around 155 centimeters tall, IIRC. The average Celt or German would've been somewhere along the lines of 10 to 20 centimeters taller, still making them substantially smaller than the average Dutchman (which, I might add, is the tallest people in the world, so that is perhaps a bad standard to go by).

[Geoffrey S]

It does come down to nutrition. Whatever the bad sides of present-day diets (fastfood and the like) they are more importantly more regular and larger amounts than in the past, excepting higher classes. A regular diet is important to allow the body to recover after labour, which I might add is a less dominant part of (Western) societies nowadays which means we can get by on an amount of food which would probably have stunted growth of a person in past centuries.

[CBR]

Roman provinces of Germania and Raetia from the first century to the fourth century AD

The mean height of the Romano -provincial population, both of men and wo men, was astonishingly high: During the Roman empire the average height of men was ca. 169.4 cm and the height of women 158.5 cm. How does this compare with heights of the last two centuries?
We compare data of nineteenth century Bavarian men and women, because
many of the observations we collected originate from this region. In nineteenth -century Bavaria women reached an average height of ca. 157.2 cm, and men ca. 166.8cm. The Romano-provincial population in the Bavarian region was on average about 2 cm taller than the population in the nineteenth century.


7. Comparison of heights of the Imperial Roman West and East

And how does the data of the Rhenish and Raetian Roman provinces in the West compare with contemporaneous heights of the eastern part of the empire? J. Angel found that Greek men of the Roman period attained a mean height of 169.2 cm, while women were 158.0 cm tall on average (AD 120 – 600). There was not much difference in height between those two parts of the Imperium Romanum

Global Height Trends in Industrial and Developing Countries, 1810-1984: An Overview

The Biological Standard of Living in Europe During the Last Two Millennia

The two other links have several graphs worth checking out. In Europe it seems average male height was 168'ish cm +/- a few cm(depending on region). That went down a bit in late 18th/19th century only to go up again during 20th century. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height for current average height in various countries.


CBR

[Kagemusha]

It is true that the median height of people has increased dramatically over the past couple centuries. What would be though intresting to know,how much average weight have changed, i would think that in the past people had larger average muscle mass then novadays, thanks to manual labour and constant training and campaigning for the warrior casts. I would suppose that people novadays have lot more bigger percentages of fat from their weight then our ancestors did. It would be intresting to know,if someone has actually studied that.

[The Wizard]

CBR: That's really, really interesting a read. Thanks for posting it! They were a whole lot taller than I though they'd be. But then again, since it's Switzerland/Austria/Bavaria they're talking about, we can't exactly speak of the average Roman; more like the average German under Roman rule. So... is there any info on the average height of people from Italy in the same age?

[Boyar Son]

Well than it seems they didnt have that much of a hieght difference from today...awww.....

maybe if we go back even farther...

[CBR]

So... is there any info on the average height of people from Italy in the same age?

I have not been able to find any specific info on Rome/Italy. Its either numbers for Mediterranean in general or Greek. Vegetius provides us with some numbers which was 165cm as minimum for basic infantry: http://pace.cns.yorku.ca/York/york/tei/logistics?id=26

The last link(page 15 figure 3) in my previous post shows a difference of around 3-4 cm between the Mediterranean and the North/Eastern group in the first few centuries.

K COSSACK:

Going even further back there is the hunter-gatherer society which seemed to have pretty good average height and then it went downhill with the introduction of agricultureThe Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunter-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5'9" for men, 5'5" for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 b.c. had reached a low of only 5'3" for men, 5' for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors.

CBR

[Watchman]

Hunter-gatherers had a fairly varied diet with a fair bit of animal protein. They also tended to die pretty young due to the harshness of the lifestyle, and the economy could only support a very small population for a given land area.

Dunno what you have against agriculture really. Without the surplus it could generate cities would not have been possible; without cities, no high culture, and without high culture, n0 c0mpu73rz 4 j00...

[CBR]

Dunno what you have against agriculture really. Without the surplus it could generate cities would not have been possible; without cities, no high culture, and without high culture, n0 c0mpu73rz 4 j00...

Because it appears that the so called "Neolithic Revolution" was not so much of a revolution at first. At least not everywhere. People didnt switch to agriculture because it was cool but because they had hunted down all the big animals to extinction. They were forced to turn to agriculture for survival and in the beginning that meant hard work for less varied nutrition.

It seems it took quite some time before before they had developed the skills and knowledge needed to regain the loss in height. And one could argue that parts of SE Asia has only been catching up in the last few decades. Rice is nice but it doesnt produce tall people.


CBR

[Watchman]

That was always one of the inherent paradoxes of agriculture - it could feed great numbers of people reasonably reliably, but was vulnerable to disasters causing loss of crops and tended to create population overgrowth issues, and the average individual was often startlingly poorly, if nonetheless survivably, fed (although this was often more due to someone else taxing the snot out of him...).

Still, without that developement we'd still be trapping squirrels and gathering berries in teensy-weensy family groups.

[The Wizard]

Yep. The Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese and Malay may be short, but there's lots of 'em.

[Gregoshi]

Seeing the length of the soldier's bunks at Vally Forge was rather startling and that dates back only a little over 200 years.

[macsen rufus]

A visit to the Battle of Bosworth museum will bring you face to face with Henry Tudor's suit of armour (IIRC) - he was TINY! I do believe the mediaeval era marked bit of a low point...

[Watchman]

On that topic, I've noticed many if not most people examining old armours merrily fail to notice the breastplate only comes down to around your waist for certain articulation-related reasons...

[Martok]

Seeing the length of the soldier's bunks at Vally Forge was rather startling and that dates back only a little over 200 years.

A question from the unenlightened: How long where they then?

[Stig]

1.80 centimeter normal over their?

so 500 years ago it would be 1.70? (no hieght in feet?)

yeah something like that.
I know of Neolithic male graves which would make humans about 1.70 in that time, not that much shorter.

[Watchman]

I think it was around mid-170cm's here too for men; about the same as today actually.

[Boyar Son]

hm, i really thought there would be 5 foot tall people..........

but all along ppl were normally OUR hieght...what a load of crap i heard...

[Watchman]

Depends on the time and place. Go back a hundred years in about any at-the-time primarily agrarian society, and that wouldn't be particularly unusual. 'S (almost) all about the diet.

[Boyar Son]

all ppl eat fruites vegetables and animals.

not much difference to me...........