– Why did people get taller over time? I was listening to a podcast today and they said the average height for a man at the time they were talking about was 5ft
In: 5
Not sure the time period you mean. Prehistoric humans were as tall as well-fed humans today. Then we discovered farming and started a 12,000 year journey of malnutrition that resulted in us being poorly fed. Living mostly on one or two foods leads to short people. Once you start eating a variety of foods again in ample quantities, especially enough protein, you get tall people again. That’s why immigrants to the US are 5’, but their grandchildren are 5’10”.
The height of a human is actually related to how much food was available when they were young. In periods of hunger and famine kids do not grow which means they end up smaller once they hit puberty. This means that throughout a lot of human history the average height have been closer to 5ft then 6ft of today. Of course this is not always the case as we do see a lot of genetic variation causing people to be of different heights and there are ancient civilizations where food was plentiful so people grew tall and strong. We can actually see when the potato spread throughout Europe using the statistics on peoples heights.
of note humans were taller in the pre-agriculture era. Agriculture made carbs more available , and proteins harder to get. It’s not until modern times (lasat 150 years) that we are starting to approach our pre-agriculture height.
Better food, more food, more food security, better medicine, better hygiene, fewer diseases made modern people taller than they used to be. Although I find it unlikely for average adult male height in Europe to have been 5 ft at any point in time. South or South-East Asia, possibly.
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