The standard reasons for why the people of southern Sudan or northern Europe are tall is that their height
is climatically adaptive (greater surface area: volume for the slim Dinka, while the Swedes tend to be
more robust and so reduce their ratio). I wonder, has anyone done work that indicates that populations
that have practiced cereal agriculture longer might be on average smaller (Syrians and Swedes for
instance have thousands of years between them, and the type of agriculture practiced differs)?
My reasoning (which might be fallacious, I would like to know from someone more in the know than I):
Taller men tend to be preferred by women the world over, so why are some groups taller than others?
There must be something that favors short men. Perhaps with the onset of cereal agriculture and the drop
in protein intake and the periodic reality of famine, larger men were more likely to die of malnutrition
than shorter men who could make it through lean times because of their lower caloric needs. Anyone done
work on this area?
(note-I don't discount the climatic explainations, I just wonder if this might be another factor. Also,
please realize that I am not a "heightist" who believes in the inferiority of short men! It is just a fact that
women prefer taller ones)
I once watched a program on the Out of Africa theory that stated the reason foe shorter men in Europe (as
opposed to Africa) was largely climactic. But African pygmies are MUCH shorter, due I think to the low
hollows and thickets they scamper through. Also, Swedes are taller than Spaniards, even though Sweden
is colder. By the above theory, Spanish men should be taller.
Some populations might have suffered a bottleneck effect, especially if certain short men carried a
resistance to certain plagues. Perhaps in wars the bigger men were killed while the ones deemed too small
or sickly to fight survived. In America, black men are on average tallest and on average have the lowest
IQs. Oriental men are on average shortest and have the highest IQs. Do you know of any data that
correlates high IQ with short stature? They'd have to look at IQ differences within races for an accurate
measurement, but it could be done. For example, the smartest black man I know, a research psychologist
at Howard, is 5'4. And yes, his wife is white. Granted, he's lighter skinned than some Cantonese, but I
still wonder if devoting so little energy to growing tall might channel into a developing brain. For the
record, I'm 5'1 ;)
Duende - I was under the impression that most, if not all of the studies looking into the matter indicate
that IQ is positively correlated with taller people. A study came out last year that found that CEO's and
corporate presidents were taller than the average white european male.
There was a study within the past year or two( someone on this blog may know who it was done by), that
indicated that northern europeans, particularly Swedes(if I can remember correctly), were decreasing in
height for the past 10 000 years until very recently when they started to have an increase in height from
better nutrition.
While average height decreased with the advent of agriculture, there are plenty of non-agricultural
societies with shorter statures--Eskimos, Lapps, Pygmies etc.
How about correlation between dairy consumption and height--Masai and Swedes both are consumers of
dairy through adulthood.
The brain demands a lot of energy - about 25% of the calories you eat goes to feed a few pounds of nerve
cells. It wouldn't be surprising to see correlations between IQ and height or other growth indicators, but
the correlation could go either way depending on the circumstances. On the one hand, Masai genes might
truly favor allocating nutrition to increased height (for better cooling), strength, and quick reflexes (for
going after lions with spears), while Chinese genes may restrict bodily development to feed the brain
sufficiently for the abstract thinking that is needed by merchants and mandarins. On the other hand, in
most of Europe up to the early 1900's, the height of much of the population was limited by chronic
childhood nutritional deficiencies, not by genetics - so it's quite likely that the brain was often somewhat
stunted too. (If you want to research this further, look up studies in the Netherlands where WWII led to a
few years of famine in a normally well-fed population; I don't recall all the details, but there are clearly
early childhood windows where adequate nutrition is needed to properly develop certain organs. However,
it's not clear how extreme cases such as this apply to the effects of lesser degrees of malnutrition, if at all.)
In the last two centuries, every 1st world country saw a steady increase in height following on nutritional
improvements from increased wealth, better ways of preserving food for the winter, and the agricultural
revolution. (It wasn't just peasants that suffered malnutrition, either. Henry VIII was over six-foot and
would have been welcome on any college football team, but his lesser nobles were often stunted, judging
by the armor suits they left behind. Getting your pick of the harvest isn't that much help when most
everything but dried grains has spoiled by March.) So clearly the common human geneotype includes the
capability of restricting height in response to a restricted diet. Probably there is also a maximum height
and a target body form set by genetics, and this can vary to adapt populations to extreme conditions. Tall
skinny Masai and short round Inuit are adaptations to weather extremes. Pigmys adapted to chronic food
shortages plus energy draining tropical diseases. Polynesians grow extra subcutaneous fat as insulation
against cold sea water. Other cases are less clear - the Germans far overmatched the Romans in both
height and girth, but this may have simply meant that their heavy use of dairy cattle kept their children
better fed.
As for women preferring taller men - until quite recently, height was an indicator of good childhood
nutrition and the socio-economic status that goes with it, plus freedom from disease. Taller men were
better providers. To some extent, they still are - they get noticed more and promoted faster than short men
with the same skills.
Hmmm...
Northern Chinese are often tall and slim too.
Genetics freak though I am, I don't think nutrition has yet been eliminated as the cause of national height
differences. There are some hulking (South) Koreans these days.
JR
Another thing to examine would be the degree of control women were able to exert in choosing a mate in
these different societies. It would seem that in a very male-dominated society, women's preference for tall
men would have less effect, while in a society where women had a lot of choice, men would face more
evolutionary pressure to become taller. I am thinking specifically here of Japan and the Celtic and Nordic
peoples, and their societies over the past thousand years or so...