Dutch men and Latvian women are the tallest in the world, new study finds

[Angela]

This has to rank as one of the more stupid remarks I've read from a supposedly educated and intelligent person:

“Our study shows the English-speaking world, especially the US, is falling behind other high-income nations in Europe and Asia Pacific,” said Majid Ezzati, a global health researcher at Imperial College London. “Together with the poor performance of these countries in terms of obesity, this emphasises the need for more effective policies towards healthy nutrition throughout life.”

A lot of Americans are obese, but does this guy have any clue how many really short Latin American migrants we have in the U.S.? I've never seen such short people as the Central Americans who have migrated to my area in the last twenty years: the men must be 5'4 and a good number of the women are under 5'. You can't compare the U.S. numbers with those of more homogeneous people. Even in terms of obesity, immigration patterns have an effect. These people, like Native North Americans, can't handle our diet and almost all of them are obese. Just from observation South Asians also get very obese here.

Don't some of these people believe in doing research before opening their mouths? Sheeesh!

 

[RobertColumbia]

There is some correlation between height and haplogroup I in Europe, but I don't think it is caused by the Y-chromosome itself. It's a group of autosomal genes that were spread by I1 and I2 people, so the correlation is approximate. Germanic people are all quite close genetically as they expanded from a core population around Denmark and North Germany about 2500 years ago. But various Germanic groups have wide differences in Y-haplogroups due to founder effects, which resulted in the West Germanic (Dutch, Belgian, English) having very high percentages of R1b, while Central Norwegians and East Germanics were biased toward R1a, and all Scandinavians toward I1.

So I think there were essentially three groups with alleles for increased height: ancient Germanic, Baltic and Dinaric people.

I think so too. It's a correlation, not a causation thing. I am R1b and 190cm (6'3"). I don't know if I am as tall as I am due to Germanic admixture. It's certainly plausible.

...“Our study shows the English-speaking world, especially the US, is falling behind other high-income nations in Europe and Asia Pacific,” said Majid Ezzati, a global health researcher at Imperial College London. “Together with the poor performance of these countries in terms of obesity, this emphasises the need for more effective policies towards healthy nutrition throughout life.”

A lot of Americans are obese...Just from observation South Asians also get very obese here....

In my experience, the latest "they are fatter than us" scapegoat for Americans nowadays has become people from the South Pacific, especially Samoans.

 

[Tomenable]

But various Germanic groups have wide differences in Y-haplogroups due to founder effects

Or due to assimilation of different substrate and superstrate populations.

 

[Maciamo]

Or due to assimilation of different substrate and superstrate populations.

Doubtful since I1, I2a2a, R1b-S21 and R1a-L664 are all found in Netherlands, North Germany and Denmark and seem to have expanded from there, moving south from Denmark perhaps as early as 1000 BCE. The eastern Netherlands, as far south of Limburg (partly in Belgium) were Germanic by 750 BCE according to this map.

Some Scandinavian haplogroups, like R1a-Z284 and R1b-L238 were indeed assimilated by the northward expansion from Denmark to Sweden and Norway as they aren't really found outside Scandinavia, except in places settled by the Vikings like Scotland and Iceland. The question is what you define as 'Germanic'? Is it only the North German/Danish core that expanded from c. 750 BCE or all people descended from the Nordic Bronze Age from as early as 1700 BCE? I usually consider the latter as the founding of Proto-Germanic culture and ethnicity. If you look at the TMRCA of the main subclades of I1 and R1b-S21 (e.g. Z19, L217, Z7, Z319), most of them are younger than 4000 years old and could therefore be considered Germanic. That being said, it is possible that some R1b-S21 ramifications branched off just before R1b moved into Scandinavia and remained in Germany or in the Netherlands. But even so they would be closely related.

 

[bicicleur 2]

This has to rank as one of the more stupid remarks I've read from a supposedly educated and intelligent person:

“Our study shows the English-speaking world, especially the US, is falling behind other high-income nations in Europe and Asia Pacific,” said Majid Ezzati, a global health researcher at Imperial College London. “Together with the poor performance of these countries in terms of obesity, this emphasises the need for more effective policies towards healthy nutrition throughout life.”

A lot of Americans are obese, but does this guy have any clue how many really short Latin American migrants we have in the U.S.? I've never seen such short people as the Central Americans who have migrated to my area in the last twenty years: the men must be 5'4 and a good number of the women are under 5'. You can't compare the U.S. numbers with those of more homogeneous people. Even in terms of obesity, immigration patterns have an effect. These people, like Native North Americans, can't handle our diet and almost all of them are obese. Just from observation South Asians also get very obese here.

Don't some of these people believe in doing research before opening their mouths? Sheeesh!

this man doesn't do research, he's obsessed with healthy food

 

[bicicleur 2]

Doubtful since I1, I2a2a, R1b-S21 and R1a-L664 are all found in Netherlands, North Germany and Denmark and seem to have expanded from there, moving south from Denmark perhaps as early as 1000 BCE. The eastern Netherlands, as far south of Limburg (partly in Belgium) were Germanic by 750 BCE according to this map.

Some Scandinavian haplogroups, like R1a-Z284 and R1b-L238 were indeed assimilated by the northward expansion from Denmark to Sweden and Norway as they aren't really found outside Scandinavia, except in places settled by the Vikings like Scotland and Iceland. The question is what you define as 'Germanic'? Is it only the North German/Danish core that expanded from c. 750 BCE or all people descended from the Nordic Bronze Age from as early as 1700 BCE? I usually consider the latter as the founding of Proto-Germanic culture and ethnicity. If you look at the TMRCA of the main subclades of I1 and R1b-S21 (e.g. Z19, L217, Z7, Z319), most of them are younger than 4000 years old and could therefore be considered Germanic. That being said, it is possible that some R1b-S21 ramifications branched off just before R1b moved into Scandinavia and remained in Germany or in the Netherlands. But even so they would be closely related.

Where was the origin of the Germanic tribes?
The Jastorf culture was an Iron Age material culture in what are now southern Scandinavia and north Germany, spanning the 6th to 1st centuries BCE, forming the southern part of the Pre-Roman Iron Age. The culture evolved out of the Nordic Bronze Age, through influence from the Halstatt culturefarther south. The cultures of the Pre-Roman Iron Age are sometimes hypothesized to be the origin of the Germanic languages. Herwig Wolfram locates the initial stages of Grimm's Law here.^{[citation needed]}
The Goths would have originated in southern Sweden, not northern Germany.
Jordanes describes the migration of the Goths from southern Scandza (Scandinavia), into Gothiscandza – believed to be the lowerVistula region in modern Pomerania – and from there to the coast of the Black Sea.

 

[Angela]

Like I said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/health/average-height-peaked.html?smid=tw-share

"Two of the study’s authors, James Bentham and Majid Ezzati, both of Imperial College, London, speculated that the decline could be because of worsening nutrition standards for poor Americans but conceded that they had not measured the effects of immigration from, for example, Central American countries with substantially shorter citizens."

I'm not saying nutrition might not be a factor for some groups, it's just that when you're doing this kind of research factoring out such obvious things seems like a no brainer.

I'd also like to see the data broken out by ethnic group and inner city versus the rest. Given the toll that drug use and alcohol abuse during pregnancy takes on fetal development, the lack of pre-natal treatment etc., certain groups might have been more negatively impacted over time.

See also, comparing the heights or parents and children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/s...edCoverage&region=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article

 

[Northener]

Doubtful since I1, I2a2a, R1b-S21 and R1a-L664 are all found in Netherlands, North Germany and Denmark and seem to have expanded from there, moving south from Denmark perhaps as early as 1000 BCE. The eastern Netherlands, as far south of Limburg (partly in Belgium) were Germanic by 750 BCE according to this map.

Some Scandinavian haplogroups, like R1a-Z284 and R1b-L238 were indeed assimilated by the northward expansion from Denmark to Sweden and Norway as they aren't really found outside Scandinavia, except in places settled by the Vikings like Scotland and Iceland. The question is what you define as 'Germanic'? Is it only the North German/Danish core that expanded from c. 750 BCE or all people descended from the Nordic Bronze Age from as early as 1700 BCE? I usually consider the latter as the founding of Proto-Germanic culture and ethnicity. If you look at the TMRCA of the main subclades of I1 and R1b-S21 (e.g. Z19, L217, Z7, Z319), most of them are younger than 4000 years old and could therefore be considered Germanic. That being said, it is possible that some R1b-S21 ramifications branched off just before R1b moved into Scandinavia and remained in Germany or in the Netherlands. But even so they would be closely related.

The longest people in the Netherlands you can find in the old Frisian area, now Friesland and Groningen. These people are close connected with the the Saxons. About 400 AD the Frisian area, due to the post Roman events, was almost empty. Some authors state you could only hear the seagulls cry! Who came into the empty "terps" indeed the Saxons, Angles, Jutes. They stick to the name Fries, but in fact genetically they were very different from the old Frisii in the Roman and pre Roman era.

In terms of genetics the Northern Netherlands so doesn't differ that much from Northwestern Germany, and in terms of food and welfare the differences are not that big. In my eyes the people of Northwestern Germany are a bit more conventional also in food stuff. So it must have something to do with natural selection, what else could explain the differences?

On thing is sure when you look at the charts the more egalitarian the society the people getting overall taller. Neoliberalism keeps the people overall small






















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[Promenade]

Is there any actual studies that show evidence that Y-DNA Haplogroups are associated with certain traits?

I always see people mention this, but as far as I know the Y chromosome is very small and deformed. It mutates quickly and is increasingly shrinking as well. Other than determining sex I would be surprised if Y-DNA haplogroups share macro-traits, but maybe someone here knows better than me?

 

[Dinarid]

Is there any actual studies that show evidence that Y-DNA Haplogroups are associated with certain traits?

I always see people mention this, but as far as I know the Y chromosome is very small and deformed. It mutates quickly and is increasingly shrinking as well. Other than determining sex I would be surprised if Y-DNA haplogroups share macro-traits, but maybe someone here knows better than me?

I do know for a fact that there is a gene important for male height, along with the aromatase gene on a chromosome which I forget.

 

[Tomenable]

Where was the origin of the Germanic tribes? The Jastorf culture

Not in Jastorf, but in Nordic Bronze Age culture. There are Proto-Germanic loanwords in Sami languages:

http://www.sgr.fi/susa/91/aikio.pdf

As for Denmark, it was not uniformly Germanic, but ethnically mixed - Germanic, but also partially Celtic:

http://www.davidkfaux.org/Cimbri-Chronology.pdf

However, the Cimbri in Jutland were probably a kind of a Celtic enclave, similar to Galatians in Anatolia.

There were also Celts in Southern part of what is now the Netherlands.

 

[Tomenable]

The oldest runic inscriptions in Germanic language are from the 2nd century AD.

They are mostly short inscriptions, usually just one word or a few words.

Longer runic inscriptions (several words) start to appear in the 5th century AD.

We also have the mysterious Negau B helmet from the 2nd century BC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negau_helmet#Inscriptions

 

[Minty]

While most countries banned the use of growth hormones being fed to livestock entering the human food chain, the Dutch persisted with it, accounting for the prevalence off tall men, and women, now seen. If the data is reviewed in 20 to 30 years time, you will find average height will normalise

 

[Maciamo]

Is there any actual studies that show evidence that Y-DNA Haplogroups are associated with certain traits?

I always see people mention this, but as far as I know the Y chromosome is very small and deformed. It mutates quickly and is increasingly shrinking as well. Other than determining sex I would be surprised if Y-DNA haplogroups share macro-traits, but maybe someone here knows better than me?

How else would you explain that men are considerably taller than women? The only difference genetically is that they possess a Y chromosome. Obviously autosomal genes also explain height differences between ethnic groups and between women. But isn't that intriguing that some societies have bigger differences of height, strength or submissiveness between gender than others? Primate studies have shown that promiscuous species like chimpanzees have very little sexual dismorphism (i.e. males aren't much bigger than females), while those where dominant males secured a stable harem of females had markedly larger males. Humans are intermediary, but not all ethnic groups behave in the exact same way either. Some cultures are more egalitarian and promiscuous (Scandinavians, Finns, East Asians), while others tend to favour strong alpha-male dominance with polygamy whenever possible (most Middle Eastern societies and many sub-Saharan African ones, but also Bronze Age Indo-Europeans).

Such differences in behaviour and sexual strategies are set in our genes, which in turn influences local cultures, morals and religions. That's why religions like Islam that favour female submission rather than sexual freedom became successful only in some ethnic groups, typically dominated by the same Y-haplogroups (mainly E1b and J) regardless of the linguistic or cultural affiliations. Chechens/Ingushs, Arabs and Iranians belong to completely different linguistic and ethnic groups but all share a high percentage of Y-DNA J and all have a similar attitude to women. Likewise, Nigerians, Moroccans and Saudis are completely distinct ethnic groups but all share a high percentage of Y-haplogroup E1b and similar attitudes towards women.

The Finns and Swedes have the high percentages of East/North Asian Y-DNA (N1c and Q1a) and have much more East Asian attitudes to sex. Is that a mere coincidence?

East Asian and Nordic countries have much lower sexual dismorphism than average, and not just for height. Scandinavians have been known for their gender equality at least since the Viking Age. It's not something new due to material wealth. It's deeply ingrained in the gene pool. Having lived in Japan for 4 years I noticed how Japanese women are almost as tall as men. Many Japanese couples I know are exactly the same height. The Japanese are also known for being very liberated sexually (and so are Scandinavians).

Women are particularly tall in Scandinavian, Baltic and Slavic countries, but are also known for their strong, non-submissive character. It's no wonder than ancient Slavic and Germanic women often fought alongside men - a notion that would be utterly baffling to ancient Romans, Greeks or any ancient or modern Middle Eastern society. So it's surely not all on the Y-chromosome. It is the eternal struggle between the X and Y chromosomes that Matt Ridley explained so brilliantly in Genome.

 

[Maciamo]

These articles (Rosa et al. 1997 and Kirsch et al. 2000) mention that deletions on the long arm of the Y-chromosomes have been linked to both short stature and infertility.

Kirsch et al. 2002 managed to localise the position of a growth gene (GCY, standing for 'Growth Control, Y Chromosome Influenced') implicated in sexual dismorphism on the Y chromosome, close to the centromere (Yq11). This gene is also known as STA, TS or TSY.

Rao et al. 1997 also found that growth retardation was caused by deletions in the pseudoautosomal region (PAR1) on the tip of the short arm of the Y chromosome.

It would be interesting to check if any known SNPs are located in of of these regions and with which haplogroup and subclade they are associated. Unfortunately gene names are rarely mentioned in the SNP nomenclature (except notably for SRY), so it could be time consuming to check the locations one by one. We need a tool to automatise the search.

 

[Northener]

@maciamo @mindy so the Dutch men as cow hormones driven alpha guys....no Olympics for us
Seriously Maciomo the Frisian Dutch are famous for their equal position between man and women, it's was the thing that for many visitors was obvious to observe, less Latin kind of way behavior So....


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[Northener]

Not in Jastorf, but in Nordic Bronze Age culture. There are Proto-Germanic loanwords in Sami languages:

http://www.sgr.fi/susa/91/aikio.pdf

As for Denmark, it was not uniformly Germanic, but ethnically mixed - Germanic, but also partially Celtic:

http://www.davidkfaux.org/Cimbri-Chronology.pdf

However, the Cimbri in Jutland were probably a kind of a Celtic enclave, similar to Galatians in Anatolia.

There were also Celts in Southern part of what is now the Netherlands.

Thanks!!! Especially for the Cimbri, I will read it, first impression Bell Beaker influence? That influence was not only in the Southern parts of the Netherlands but also in the North.....but I will read it first!


















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[Maleth]

It has something to do more with food availability and its type and the environment one lives in. Thats were our chromosomes get their instructions from. Its all about how a living thing is able to survive in different circumstances. Its what they call evolution, a process alive and well in both plants and animals as a fascinating tool for survival. Growing tall or growing short is only part of that process. Haplogroups have nothing do with this process, but rather environment and food source.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/120201_tinychameleons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism

humans are not much different

 

[Maleth]

Diet definitely has something to do with it; I must have overdone the cheese and generally the protein for my son as he's 6'3". Bizarrely, he has a preference for tiny girls, 5'2 or 3 or so. I think it looks funny, but hey, it's not my life and this kind of stuff is so trivial. As for the rest, they sort of look like me, so that makes me happy. Not that I needed that to know he sort of likes me.

I am 6ft tall (183cm) (Very tall on local standards) I used to drink and enjoy Milk when I was young as if my life depended on it. I used to drink my best friends milk too at primary school as he used to get nausea just by the smell of it (he told me).

 

[Maleth]

Most will think, this is very nasty. But we would also on certain occasion, eat reindeer meat. But it was a Swede or Finn thing. I hated it! Milk was a favorite of mine too and still drink to this day.

That is all high protein food so I am sure its very relevant. Also wild meat is low on fat (especially as it used to be). Mediterranean diets would be more carbohydrate and plant based and meat was more of a festive nature. Traditional hunting (Meat) would be small game (birds and rabbits) and some fish and chickens and roosters where killed for Sunday Lunch (traditionally) before the advents of supermarkets. Not enough pasture to support big livestock such as cows and others. Sheep and goats would be the largest you would get. Lamb was served for special occasions and milk just came from Goats with little cheeslets processed from it. Of course things would change once you get to higher altitudes in Mediterranean Europe, which would be more similar say to Central Europe in both hunting and agriculture. Today that has all changed because of modern methods, and supermarkets are looking the same where ever you go. The height is also noticeable from one generation to the other due to a higher protein diet.