short ancestors

**Kagemusha** · 09-16-2007, 14:03

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** · 09-16-2007, 19:22

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** · 09-16-2007, 21:39

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

maybe if we go back even farther...

**CBR** · 09-17-2007, 04:36

Originally Posted by Baba Ga'on

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

CBR

**Watchman** · 09-17-2007, 06:18

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** · 09-17-2007, 13:39

Originally Posted by Watchman

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** · 09-17-2007, 13:55

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.