4 ms·
This seems like a BS answer to me. Tall people in all societies have always had an advantage in terms of status in society and therefore wealth and health. But
by tenant 7y ago
This seems like a BS answer to me.
Tall people in all societies have always had an advantage in terms of status in society and therefore wealth and health.
But unless tall people were reproducing at an extraordinary rate relative to small people there just hasn't been enough time elapsed to explain the change on a society wide basis.
English people were small by modern standards at the time of Napoleonic wars as evidenced by e.g. the dimensions of the living areas on board the ships of the time.
OTOH Irish soldiers in the service of various European countries in the 17th and 18th centuries were noted as being tall for the time. They were mainly of rural stock and would have been relatively well nourished in childhood compared to urban reared children. Whereas today Irish people would be of just average height or maybe even lower than average height by European standards.
I suspect that the reason for the Dutch being small then was poverty and that the relative rapid growth in the meantime is due to improved nutrition which has allowed them to grow to their genetic potential.
- rjsw 7y agoEnglish people were small at the time of the Boer wars too, there were problems finding enough suitable soldiers, the food rationing in WWII actually improved diet for the average worker.
- tenant 7y agoYou can still see this phenomenon. People from disadvantaged backgrounds in European cities (for example inner city communities) tend to be smaller than average.
- tenant 7y agoActually the Boer war brings to mind the fact that the Afrikaaner people of South Africa are noted for being of large stature. They are primarily of Dutch origin as well but have long been separated from Holland. So the fact that these two societies would share the attribute of being tall suggests to me that Dutch tallness compared to everyone else is genetic in origin
- FreekNortier 7y agoAfrikaner here. I'm 6 feet tall and I'm the "short" one in my family and friend circle.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoI'm an Iowan from USA. My 6' son is the shortest male in our entire extended family. German ancestors.
- tenant 7y agoIf it's not too personal, is your wife of German extraction too?
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoShe's Italian and 5'3" Three sons - 6', 6'3" and 6'4"
- tenant 7y agoSounds like your line is secure for another few generations at least!
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoMy eldest has married a 6'1" Amazon. So yeah.
- econcon 7y agoDo you know anyone in your community who don't have enough to eat but yet they are tall?
- FreekNortier 7y agoThe poor ones tend to be tall but are skinny.
- 3pt14159 7y agoYou'd be surprised just how fast evolution can happen on traits that don't come with serious downsides. It's observable in couple generations.
- tenant 7y agoDo you have a specific example that demonstrates this?
- cambalache 7y agoHe doesn't because is BS.
- onychomys 7y agoIt's really not. Speciation is slow (on the order of 50 generations at minimum), but selection is very powerful, and can cause large phenotypic changes in the span of tens of generations instead.
- econcon 7y agoMost people are fixated on nutrition to make people taller but nutrition can only do so much. Imagine if you've a goal to increase height of people from 165 to 190cm with minimum number of generations. How will you go about it. Easiest and fastest way is to have two tall parents breed. You'll see it happen within 2 generation. Now, if you improve nutrition of people who are 165cm today. How many generations of better nutrition does it require to make them reach 190cm? Certainly more than 2 generations. Point is that, if you think "sexual selection" is not fast enough to take people from 165 to 190 within few generations (as is the case with Dutch) then better nutrition certainly is not either. Cattle/pet breeder do it all time.
- tenant 7y agoCattle breeders don't allow inferior males to breed at all and typically a single bull can have thousands of progeny via artificial insemination. That doesn't happen in human societies where most males will have a chance to breed. Also the time-spans are far longer for humans than cattle where the next generation is ready for breeding two years after birth.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoInteresting. But weren't the Dutch well-nourished 200 years ago? They were relatively wealthy... If the height differences were adjusted for income etc, it would be convincing. I didn't read the OP. Did they do that? They did compare them to other populations at the time. Unless the Dutch were especially under-nourished, then the effect seems reasonably well-founded.
- tenant 7y agoThey took account of differences in income for modern Dutch people but not historically I think. I don't know how poor the average Dutch person was relative to other European countries back then that might explain them being small at that time either. The change since then is so extreme relative to other societies that to account for it with an explanation that is just as applicable to all other European societies just doesn't seem plausible to me. Some sort of health or nutrition explanation peculiar to Holland and perhaps to do with childhood intervention (e.g. effectiveness of vaccination programmes, childhood or pregnant mother care, smoking rates etc) seems more likely.
- TheCoelacanth 7y agoThe Dutch had an unusually high level of urbanization. Until the 20th century, urbanization was correlated with worse nutrition.
- econcon 7y agoMy new theory is that, Dutch were already selecting for "tall strature" for long time (maybe 10 generations) even when they were on average much shorter than rest of the Europe because of mostly malnutrition. But why were they aggressively selecting for tall stature? Perhaps because they were on average shorter than rest of Europeans, so they felt there is something wrong with them? Which isn't unbelievable, I've seen shortest girls demand the tallest men. So when nutrition improved those already tall genes which were there, got time to express themselves to the fullest. Here is some acecdote: In my village, people mostly select average height partner. And tall people aren't considered more desirable. No one compared height or thought of it as some advantage but when men from other tribes started appearing near the village, suddenly they started thinking of how to increase their height, some are now drinking gallons of milk in effort to improve their height because they are lagging, while women want the tall men now. My grandma tells me, they never thought about "height" as a trait they select in their partner, they never thought about it. To her, any man who was average and could work on farm (not crippled), was not very ugly was a good partner.
- abandonliberty 7y agoYou're conflating natural selection with sexual selection. Overall, the paper argues that taller people have more offspring who survive to reproductive age.