Society New map of average male body height in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa

Gash said:
It isnt really a mistake , it just shows it as 177 - 180 cm instead of the specific height , but it is most likely somewhere around there, in some areas 177 in others 1.80 .. Montenegro Albos probably are the tallest and it could get higher there and inmsome other areas ... but all in all the map is accurate and 1.80 isnt short for European standards. Also shows the north as taller than the south. Same way when Coon studied Albanians. We are diverse in height. Mirdita in the north and some other areas of the South have a lot of Alpines or reduced Cromagnoids.
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It was a mistake. It was corrected. Northern alb and kosova were the same color as southern albania. It was only corrected after i pointed towards a study with more individuals which showed an average height of 179cm in the north.
 
To get back to the science of it, instead of male boasting rights, the latest paper finds little to no selection for it, so I guess we're back to diet and chance.
 
Angela said:
To get back to the science of it, instead of male boasting rights, the latest paper finds little to no selection for it, so I guess we're back to diet and chance.
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Diet plays a big role. I think pretty soon we will see smaller and smaller differences in height between nations in Europe.
 
Well, I certainly hope that doesn't mean Southern Europeans are going to start guzzling gallons of milk and tons of beef, both loaded with fat and hormones. Humans don't need to consume so much protein and animal fat.
 
bigsnake49 said:
Diet plays a big role. I think pretty soon we will see smaller and smaller differences in height between nations in Europe.
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I think its genetics! I have seen South Albanians born and raised in USA, no noticeable difference in height from people from South Albania.
 
Obviously data trumps anecdote, but I'm convinced Northern England and Scotland have much taller people than this.
 
Salento said:
Interesting:

In 67 ad, the minimum requirement for a Legionnaire of the Legio Italica was 1.77 m. - 5’8” (considerable height for the time) and born in the Italic Peninsula

in Italian
https://www.capitolivm.it/esercito-romano/storia-delle-legioni-romane-2/
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By contrast, the height requirement for the British Army in World War I was 5'3", but so many died that they lowered it to 5'. They were called the bantams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantam_(military)

I know the lower classes had terrible diets throughout the Victorian Era, but that's really pretty short.

I remember people on the old dna-forums and here as well trying to convince me that the Roman legionnaires ate only puls and therefore must have been very puny. I couldn't convince them that that seemed to me impossible given how many battles they won and how much land they conquered. Strategy and discipline can take you only so far.

Then, in the last couple of years studies have come out showing that the legions had cattle, pigs, sheep, set up fish ponds, and grew some of their own food. It was mainly the wheat and wine which were shipped in, along with garum, which they loved. Of course, when on the march they carried only flour to make bread, salt pork, and wine.

Not to say that the Gauls and Germani weren't somewhat larger. It just goes to show that diet did indeed make a difference over the millennia. Still, the British aren't particularly tall even now. I've been re-watching Game of Thrones, and a lot of the male actors are pretty short, starting with Kit Harington, who looks to be about 5'5"-5'7". Not that I can imagine any woman complaining. :) A lot of others as well, such as the actors playing Ramsay Bolton, Theon Greyjoy, Littlefinger, Joffrey, even Richard Madden.
 
Tutkun Arnaut said:
I think its genetics! I have seen South Albanians born and raised in USA, no noticeable difference in height from people from South Albania.
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It's clearly to at least a very decent degree genetics. My school basically had three ethnic groups: Jews, Indians and "normal" Whites, and when we had to line up in terms of height it was always Jews and Indians at the back. Thankfully I had a growth spurt, but I'm still relatively short. Again, only anecdote, but come on it's obvious.
 
By far tallest ancient Eurasian population I've come across in literature are the Holocene hunter gatherers of northern India. I wonder if in those regions, diet might be significant factor suppressing height growth.

Some Paleolithic East African hunter gatherer populations dwarfed even Dutch/Bosnians it seems.
 
ToBeOrNotToBe said:
That sounds extraordinarily high for the time, and 1.77m is almost 5'10", not 5'8". 5.8 feet is different to 5'8". I'm sceptical - I doubt the average Germanic warrior was even that tall on average.
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Divide 177 by 30.48 = 5.8....

round it up however you like!

That’s why the EU can’t send anything in to Space without problems.
They don’t even agree on math!
 
Salento said:
Divide 177 by 30.48 = 5.8....

round it up however you like!

That’s why the EU can’t send anything in to Space without problems.
They don’t even agree on math!
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1.77m is 5.8 feet but not 5’8” as feet and inches are duodecimal, not decimal. And I’m British, we use feet and inches here too.
 
markod said:
By far tallest ancient Eurasian population I've come across in literature are the Holocene hunter gatherers of northern India. I wonder if in those regions, diet might be significant factor suppressing height growth.

Some Paleolithic East African hunter gatherer populations dwarfed even Dutch/Bosnians it seems.
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Interesting, I would have gone with the obvious answer and guessed Cro-Magnons were the tallest
 
ToBeOrNotToBe said:
1.77m is 5.8 feet but not 5’8” as feet and inches are duodecimal, not decimal. And I’m British, we use feet and inches here too.
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What? Did I make you shorter or something.

Tomato Potato

Edited: too much off topic info.
 
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ToBeOrNotToBe said:
Interesting, I would have gone with the obvious answer and guessed Cro-Magnons were the tallest
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As far as I know Cro-Magnons weren't really that tall, at least I've never seen evidence of it. Cro-Magnon 1 for example was well below 170 cm. They tended to be quite robust however, and I believe that contemporaneous African humans might have been very tall. In cold climates very tall physiques would probably have been a disadvantage.

As for India, these are Lukacs et al. (2003) measurements for the Gangetic plain hunters:

kNmipPv.png


Amazingly in one of the samples the women have an average height of ~189 cm.
 
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Salento said:
Two views on the height of Cro-Magnon:

Cro-Magnons were robustly built and powerful and are presumed to have been about 166 to 171 cm.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cro-Magnon

————

The Cro-Magnons, the first anatomically modern Europeans, living around 30-40,000 years ago, were impressively tall (many over 6 feet 6 inches)

https://m.phys.org/news/2009-10-modern-men-wimps.html
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The only 'evidence' for the latter view are claims by early 20th century cranks who never published any actual measurements. Ludicrous myths like that always seem to develop lives of their own in the English speaking world, seeing how there are thousands of books with claims about 7-foot-tall Cro-Magnons. Not sure why this is the case.

Coon addressed this already:


"FROM ABOUT 30,000 TO 10,000 YEARS AGO, the Upper Paleolithic Europeans lived in the lee of the ice from Spain to Russia. They buried their dead as the Neanderthals had done, and they wore fitted garments. From a grave below the permafrost at Sungir, about 142 miles(200 km) east-northeast of Moscow, a male skeleton dated at 22,000 years ago was disinterred in 1964. It showed traces of a fur shirt and trousars and bracelets and beads of mammoth tusk and the perforated canine teeth of arctic fox.

The Upper Paleolithic Europeans were modern Caucasoids. During their span of 20,000 years, their bodies changed physically very little if at all, for their adjustments to their environment left nothing to be desired. The famous "Old Man of Cro Magnon" was not a giant, as often depicted, but only 5 feet, 6 inches(168.4 cm) tall. The mean stature for twelve adult male skeletons was 5 feet, 8 inches 173 cm). The tallest 5 feet, 11 1/2 inchs(182cm), and the shortest was 5 feet, 3 inches(160cm). The five female skeletons recorded had a mean sature of 5 feet, 1 inch(155.5 cm) and a range from 5 feet, 1/2 inch(154 cm) to 5 feet, 2 inches(157.5 cm). This sex difference in stature varies closely with that in head size, as we shall presently see.

The limb bones of these people were rather slender, like those of Mount Carmel people, and their hands and feet were normal for slenderly built Europeans. We know this from negative silhouettes made by spraying pigment out of bone tubes over hands held against a cave wall, and from footprints found on cave floors.

There is little evidence that the Upper Paleolithic Europeans absorbed the Neanderthals that preceded them. Why the Neanderthals faded away is a mystery. One may postulate that they succumbed to diseases brought by their successors to which they had no genetic immunity, just as smallpox and tuberculosis decimated the American Indians; or one can suppose that they were hunted down by the invaders(which has also been done in modern times); or perhaps they died of crowding or of grief. (Is it possible that, because of phonemic limitations, they could not learn their invaders' languages? Or only with a poor accent?)"
 
markod said:
The only 'evidence' for the latter view are claims by early 20th century cranks who never published any actual measurements. Ludicrous myths like that always seem to develop lives of their own in the English speaking world, seeing how there are thousands of books with claims about 7-foot-tall Cro-Magnons. Not sure why this is the case.

Coon addressed this already:


"FROM ABOUT 30,000 TO 10,000 YEARS AGO, the Upper Paleolithic Europeans lived in the lee of the ice from Spain to Russia. They buried their dead as the Neanderthals had done, and they wore fitted garments. From a grave below the permafrost at Sungir, about 142 miles(200 km) east-northeast of Moscow, a male skeleton dated at 22,000 years ago was disinterred in 1964. It showed traces of a fur shirt and trousars and bracelets and beads of mammoth tusk and the perforated canine teeth of arctic fox.

The Upper Paleolithic Europeans were modern Caucasoids. During their span of 20,000 years, their bodies changed physically very little if at all, for their adjustments to their environment left nothing to be desired. The famous "Old Man of Cro Magnon" was not a giant, as often depicted, but only 5 feet, 6 inches(168.4 cm) tall. The mean stature for twelve adult male skeletons was 5 feet, 8 inches 173 cm). The tallest 5 feet, 11 1/2 inchs(182cm), and the shortest was 5 feet, 3 inches(160cm). The five female skeletons recorded had a mean sature of 5 feet, 1 inch(155.5 cm) and a range from 5 feet, 1/2 inch(154 cm) to 5 feet, 2 inches(157.5 cm). This sex difference in stature varies closely with that in head size, as we shall presently see.

The limb bones of these people were rather slender, like those of Mount Carmel people, and their hands and feet were normal for slenderly built Europeans. We know this from negative silhouettes made by spraying pigment out of bone tubes over hands held against a cave wall, and from footprints found on cave floors.

There is little evidence that the Upper Paleolithic Europeans absorbed the Neanderthals that preceded them. Why the Neanderthals faded away is a mystery. One may postulate that they succumbed to diseases brought by their successors to which they had no genetic immunity, just as smallpox and tuberculosis decimated the American Indians; or one can suppose that they were hunted down by the invaders(which has also been done in modern times); or perhaps they died of crowding or of grief. (Is it possible that, because of phonemic limitations, they could not learn their invaders' languages? Or only with a poor accent?)"
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Nice, I was definitely one of those people who associated Cro-Magnons as being giant meatheads
 
@Markod Thank You, I agree with you.

i was attempting to show how “some” people pick and choose Info that best suits their views.
 
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