How We Get Tall

http://theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/how-we-get-tall/361881/

by sizzle • 12 years ago

87 51 12 years ago

We still haven't reached the average height we were 40000 years ago[1]. Agriculture allowed us to feed many more people, but it came at a terrible price on human health.

And the fact that the article says we are taller now than we have ever been in history, which is patently not true, casts a serious level of doubt on the article.

1. http://australianmuseum.net.au/How-have-we-changed-since-our...

kordless• 12 years ago

The article is mostly based on a work by "Tim Hatton, an economist at the University of Essex in the U.K.". That the author took license calling a moment in man's history 'most of human history' doesn't imply the rest of the article isn't worth anything. Also, I don't know living longer, or living without hunger is that terrible of a price to pay. More souls, after all.

trentmb• 12 years ago

but it came at a terrible price on human health.

Could you elaborate please.

tsenkov• 12 years ago

"We are now generally shorter, lighter and smaller boned than our ancestors were 100,000 years ago. The decrease has been gradual but has been most noticeable in the last 10,000 years. However, there has been some slight reversal to this trend in the last few centuries as the average height has started to increase."

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

Another very interesting fact - brain gets smaller in volume and unlike height, this trend is still not reversed (not sure about weight, though).

ama7292• 12 years ago

We still haven't reached the average height we were 40000 years ago[1]

Yes we do, there are a number of countries where the average height is close to 183 cm (average in your article, though there are no citations given for that fact): The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Serbia, ... In the Dinaric Alps, it even reach 186 cm, so in fact we ARE taller today[1].

But another article[2] with actual sources point to an 176.2 cm average, much smaller than today.

but it came at a terrible price on human health

[Citation needed]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#Average_height_ar...

[2] http://archaeology.about.com/od/earlymansites/a/cro_magnon.h...

graeme3• 12 years ago

Re: health the linked article said that worse diet led to shorter height.

Here's a longer discussions (cited by 178):

http://www3.gettysburg.edu/~dperry/Class%20Readings%20Scanne...

Retric2• 12 years ago

Comparing a world wide average with a relatively tiny sub population is hardly reasonable. Otherwise we could just look at the average height of NBA players and say that's a reasonable proxy for the US average height.

frozenport• 12 years ago

>came at a terrible price on human health

http://www.thelazycaveman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/cav...

graeme3• 12 years ago

See this chart on historical life expectancy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy...

Early 20th century was also 30 years. Ancient Rome was 20-30.

These expectancies were low chiefly because of high infant mortality. A life expectancy of "two days" really drags down your average.

Average life expectancy is not a good measure for everyday arguments. Paleolithic average life expectancy was actually quite high relative to the historical periods that followed.

crusso4• 12 years ago

but it came at a terrible price on human health

That statement doesn't make sense.

It was because agriculture contributed so mightily to human health and well-being that we survived and flourished to cover the surface of the earth and travel into space.

Even if some of our ancestors were bigger, it doesn't mean that they were "more healthy".

graeme3• 12 years ago

"doesn't make sense" is not a good way to evaluate statements if you don't have knowledge in the domain.

The decline in human health post-agriculture is pretty well accepted within anthropology. Jared Diamond's discussion has been widely cited:

http://www3.gettysburg.edu/~dperry/Class%20Readings%20Scanne...

Cultures didn't flourish because they were in good health. They likely flourished because agriculture supported a lot of people within that culture, which let them dominate other cultures.

NIL8• 12 years ago

According to your article, the size of our brains has also decreased over the years. I would assume that this would also decrease our processing power and overall brain function. Interesting.

marcosdumay• 12 years ago

Those are different phenomena. The fast growth we experienced at the last centuries isn't related to genetic changes.

septerr• 12 years ago

Could the fact that America has been a melting pot of immigrants moving in from various parts of the world affected the average American height? I am from Southeast Asia, where average heights are less than European or Americans'. And my impression is more people like me have settled in America in recent years than say several decades ago, causing the average American height to go down. In which case, nutrition and healthcare may not be the (sole) cause.

ZoF• 12 years ago

Yep, this very possibility is stated near the end of the article.

"That’s probably not the full story—immigration and fertility changes play a role too, after all."

Gracana• 12 years ago

"It wasn’t until well after the invention of cars and antibiotics that the average European man outgrew today’s average American teenaged girl."

Am I missing something or is that a really bizarre statement?

refurb• 12 years ago

It's a bit odd. Instead of just saying "Until the 1940s, average European men were shorter than today's average American girl", the author tried to spice it up with a historical reference. Surprised the editor didn't demand it be changed.

rdl• 12 years ago

Females are shorter than males. Adults are taller than teenagers.

It's saying it took until the 1930+s for European men to reach levels of height we'd consider normal for teenaged girls today.

thaumasiotes3• 12 years ago

Yeah, this reminds me of a somewhat chilling moment when a chinese teenager asked me what I was reading about (regression to the mean).

By way of introducing the concept, I asked "if someone is very tall, are their parents probably taller or shorter than they are?" "Shorter". So far so good.

"If someone is very short, are their parents taller or shorter?" "Shorter".

Apparently, to the current generation, no matter how short you are, your parents are shorter. Long live the CCP :/

Theodores• 12 years ago

I would be more interested in a 'door height' study. In lots of rural areas you have doors that are clearly built with the expectation that nobody taller than 5'6" would darken the doorway. I believe hats were more prevalent in these pre-motorcar times so there was even less height consideration made.

Doors tell their own story, big cities have been redeveloped (and bombed) whereas rural areas or places that have not got much of a look in since the early days of the industrial revolution have not.

Given that there is no theory that fully holds water on why we grow tall (I personally blame the Green Revolution), you could probably blur correlation/causation in a 'door and mattress size' study to conclude that 'if we make the doors bigger then people grow to fill them'.

tom_jones• 12 years ago

I thought the Maasai people of East Africa were the tallest. Their height is all the more impressive considering their rough lifestyles and nutrition.

Someone• 12 years ago

They may be, but you won't see them influence per country average length much, as there are no countries where the fraction of Maasai in the population is large.

has2k1• 12 years ago

The Maasai are not known for their height, it's the Dinka (remember Manute Bol?) of South Sudan.

Dewie5• 12 years ago

John Komlos, an economic historian who has studied height extensively, thinks we Americans lost our height advantage because of poorer overall healthcare and nutrition compared to Europe. Our social shortcomings, he believes, are literally making us come up short.

"lost our height advantage". These kinds of articles always seem to boil down to "why has America fallen from grace/stopped being #1?".

crusso4• 12 years ago

With an added hammer pounding for European-style healthcare, which is mentioned three or four times while considering American immigration influx from "shorter" populations is a throwaway word at the end of the article.

BugBrother• 12 years ago

Is there no "more fast food in USA" hypothesis?

(I.e. a lack of fiber, vitamins or something?)

muyuu4• 12 years ago

I also find the "taller is better" a bit unscientific. So, 10, 20 ft tall is better?

juggty_dev• 12 years ago

I thought the Tutsi were the tallest people.

brianfearn• 12 years ago

When we compare individuals within homogenous populations, taller people actually live shorter lives and have higher rates of cancer and heart disease: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

a8da6b0c91d• 12 years ago

Small dogs live longer than big dogs. It's the same in all mammals. Within a species the smaller individuals tend to have a higher metabolic rate, weight adjusted, and live longer.

whiddershins• 12 years ago

This article is a fantastic example of un-science presented as narrative. Conflicting hypotheses about what causes height increase are presented as fact with no citations and little attention paid to the paradox. This reminds me of virtually every article I've read on population trends for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, gun violence ... and what frustrates me is I think the authors and editors don't realize what complete nonsense this is.

pcurve• 12 years ago

Yep, I was expecting a bit better from the Atlantic. This article shed no new light on the topic.

tokenadult• 12 years ago

I'm seeing the usual comments about life expectancy and IQ here, so I had better respond to both issues.

First of all, and I encourage readers to follow the links for more details, today we have longer life expectancies at birth, at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages than ever before.[1] Whatever it is that we are eating these days, so far our diets aren't undermining the steady long-term trend of increasing life expectancy at ALL ages all over the developed world. An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why"[2] tells the story of the steady improvements in prevention and treatment that have reduced all-cause mortality and morbidity for Americans and for most people in the developed countries. I have been stunned to realize I now have several aunts and uncles who are past the age of 90 and still living independently and in reasonably good health. A couple years ago I was shopping for a birthday present for my own mother, now more than 80 years old, and I found multiple birthday cards for 80th and 90th birthday cards for sale at the bookstore where I was shopping. Lots of people are living a long time now.

But don't just take my anecdotes as evidence. Check what professional demographers write about the issue in peer-reviewed journal articles and say about the issue in press interviews. Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,[3] originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[4]

There are also comments here about human brain size and human cognitive ability. First of all, it is entirely clear that human cognitive ability as gauged by "g-loaded" IQ tests has been rising for the last century.[5] That's over a time span that doesn't include any noteworthy increase in brain size and is surely a result of environmental factors. The general trend of hominin evolution over millions of years is a general increase in brain size and a general rise in signs of intelligent behavior like skillfully made tools and visual art, but there is not a completely linear relationship between brain size found in fossils (which are a very limited sample of early hominin specimens) and signs of cultural advancement.[6] Cultural innovation can now be transmitted culturally all over the world, so that a small number of innovators can change the material resources and improve the lifestyles of most of humankind. You may not need to be smart enough to invent anything, because you are already smart enough to use most new inventions, wherever they come from.

[1] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...

[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...

[3] http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...

[4] http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....

[5] http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-us/directory/beyond...

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_h...

[6] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/13/from-nean...

How We Get Tall

Related Stories