spongetaro
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I've selected a few article about the evolution of height and its origins in two countries: Netherlands and the USA.
Dutch have become taller and American "smaller"
Factors Influencing Height
Dutch have become taller and American "smaller"
The Dutch were not noted for their height until recently. It was only in the 1950s that they passed the Americans, who stood tallest for most of the last 200 years, said John Komlos, a leading expert on the subject who is professor of economic history at the University of Munich in Germany. He said the United States has now fallen behind Denmark.
Dutch, than nowdays are among the tallest people in the world, were notoriously short before the 20th century. The Low Countries since the 15th century hadby far the highest rate of urban poopulation. Spanish soldiers in the Low Countriesin the 16th and 17th centuries looked down on the local people, for instance Military tratadist Sancho de Londoña wrote that one of the reasons of the superiority of the Spanish infantry was that Spanish soldiers were taller and stronger, so they could yield longer pikes than the Dutch.
Factors Influencing Height
In the late 1700s, for example, American-born colonialists made good use of their sparsely populated, protein-rich environment to become taller than their European contemporaries: average height was five foot eight for American men, judging from military and prison records. That was nearly two inches taller than the average British soldier. Just decades later, however, a strange stunting started to occur that researchers don't fully understand. American incomes rose from the early to mid-1800s, but that didn't equate to better living conditions. As Americans became richer -- as a group anyway -- they also shrank.By the early 1900s, Americans were again among the world's tallest people. But now measurers are starting to detect another mysterious levelling off. At an average of five foot ten, American-born men from the 1970s are not much taller than their great-grandfathers. So much for the modern diet.
Average heights declined over the next 1,800 years as food supply failed to keep pace with population growth and people moved into disease-ridden cities, said Maat. He spoke from his office, cluttered with leg bones and skulls, overlooking a grassy quadrangle that is the burial site of thousands killed by plague in 1635. Even during the 17th century, when Amsterdam was the world's richest city, wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few merchants and average height did not increase.
In Northern Europe, human height reached a high around 800 A.D., but then dropped to a low in the 17th century before climbing back up again. Two main factors seem to have caused this dip. The first was the growth of cities: the more people were clustered together, the less food there was to go round and the faster diseases spread; the second was the drop in global temperatures, during what is known as the Little Ice Age. Findings such as these have made it clear that human height is not just linked to genetics or diet, but is much more sensitive to a range of influences than was previously thought.