5 ms·

What is sometimes lost in these analyses is the fact that man in Classical Greece was a good deal smaller than present day man. > "The Metapontion necropolis .

What is sometimes lost in these analyses is the fact that man in Classical Greece was a good deal smaller than present day man. > "The Metapontion necropolis ... revealed that the average height of adult males was between 162 and 165 cm (5'3.5" - 5'5"), that of females between 153 and 156 cm, and with a body weight of approximately 60-65 kg for males and 50-55 kg for females; in other words, the findings of earlier examinations were soundly confirmed in this respect." > - Kagan, Donald, and Gregory F. Viggiano, eds. Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece. Princeton University Press, 2013. The 2023 paper "Stature estimation in Ancient Greece: population-specific equations and secular trends from 9000 BC to 900 AD" also corroborates this -- it posits a mean in Classical Greece of 162cm (5'3.5"), and in Bronze Age Greece at 163.1cm (5'4"). The mean is approximately the same, by the way, even in Late Medieval British men. (162.1cm.) This sort of thing often warps historical re-enactment. A katana designed for a 5'1" samurai is not going to be a proper fit for a 6' iaido practitioner in Iowa. A Naue II sword with a small grip may have simply been designed for a small man, who would have gripped it quite normally, and not in ways that seem exotic or unusual, e.g. index finger over guard. Incidentally, the proper way to perform the analysis in OP is with anthropometric modeling in CAD programs. This can be informed (but not totally) by hands-on experimentation, and would give a statistically useful range of potential results.

potato3732842 2y ago
You see this with all sorts of stuff. All sorts of machinery one would stand at and operate is short. The human spaces of things operated by crews are frequently too cramped for proper operation with the same size crew. Children in particular were way smaller back then so job duties and equipment customarily given to young teens and pre teens don't work with equivalent modern people even after controlling for waistline.
- hprotagonist 2y ago
  also, societies are generally just fine trading discomfort for profit. a fine example is ceiling height in colonial american homes: sure people were somewhat shorter then on average, but also and more importantly, smaller rooms are easier to heat, and the tall lumber is worth far too much to waste on stupid things like houses, so you suck it up and stoop when you’re indoors. interpreting the dimensions of historical goods is tricky.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    Colonial American homes are not so short ceilinged that the average person, even today, needs to watch their heads. Ducking in doorways isn't a big deal. Yes, standards for comfort were different back then but you don't see things get built that are actively hard to use unless there is some very serious thing you get from the tradeoff (like the deck heights in ships) because things need to be used to produce results. In a world where stuff is expensive and labor is cheap things get build such that the ability to apply labor to them is not a bottleneck. For example a work station that can be effectively operated by larger people tends to permit smaller people to work really fast without conflicting as much if the situation demands it. Some tool that operates by human muscle power and is just the right balance of mechanical advantage vs speed for the smallest man in normal conditions can be worked by a woman or child in ideal circumstances or a normal may may be able to work it for extended hours under normal conditions. Whether the tradeoffs make sense depends on the application.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      Amusingly, though, modern homes sometimes are. When we were house shopping, we saw a house whose basement ceiling was perfectly serviceable, albeit maybe a little cramped, for the family living there - none of whom appeared to be over 5'6" - but I would have to stoop the entire time I was in the (fully finished! as an entertainment/living room!) basement. I think the ceiling was something like 5'10".
      - cafard 2y ago
        A college friend, about 5'2", married a guy 6'2" or 6'3". He had enough money that they had a house built, and the architect or builder put in a room just for her, where nobody over 5'6" or so could stand up straight. Frank Lloyd Wright was not tall. We toured a home he had built somewhere in LA, and I think that anyone over about 6'3" would have wanted to avoid thick-soled sneakers. I said to the docent, Not a lot of Lakers receptions here? He agreed.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Wood was plentiful and cheap in colonial America so tall lumber wasn't worth much more than shorter. You had to cut far more trees than the house and barns needed anyway (one reason log cabins were popular - they were made of waste) to make room for the fields. However it was still a lot of work to cut the wood (log cabins required you to square all the logs - round logs will roll off each other and make for large gaps, square the logs and they stack well and have smaller gaps between them - you could use round for the sides, but typically you wanted all 4 sides square to make nicer rooms), so you often would say good enough when the room was shorter just to avoid the labor. In Europe wood was much more expensive (they had been using it for 1000 years or so). The natives in America had different practices and so didn't typically use wood the way settlers did.
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  We went to Hot Springs Arkansas once and were upstairs in a historical gymnasium and it was hilarious how low everything was. Punching bags and rings and stuff that were about nose high and we were looking over the top of all of it. They said it was because everyone was so short back then. We take for granted all the advances in better nutrition and other things we just experienced in the 20th century. An unprecedented era in human history we don’t thank our lucky stars to have been born in enough. Some good discussions with references here. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ao9uhc/eli5_why_did_us_humans_become_way_taller_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ao9uhc/...
- flir 2y ago
  > Children in particular were way smaller back then I noticed this in the records of the Royal Navy in the 19th century - after a few years of the Navy feeding them, a lot of those kids had just shot up.
nabla9 2y ago
Franks, Arabs and others always commented how tall and beautiful Vikings/Norsemen were. They were on average about 170 - 174 cm, shorter than today.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  Yeah, that's not far from today's 50th percentile height in the US Army, which is 175.5cm. Our Ancient Greek would be in the second percentile. This has serious implications for hand breadth and how they might use a sword with a grip not far from 3" long. See: https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW (From "2012 Anthropometric Survey of US Army Personnel")
- Tor3 2y ago
  One data sample - the Norse settlements in Greenland: Average for men was 171cm, but many were 184-185 cm (wikipedia). Women's average height was 156 cm.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  Several years ago, I visited Mikulčice, where the former capital of Great Moravia (9th century AD) was excavated. In the museum, most of the skeletons were < 170 cm. One, though, stood out at 183 cm. According to DNA, this skeleton belonged to a Nordic man.
Freak_NL 2y ago
Would anthropometric modeling result in a better analysis than letting someone proficient in swordplay of the right size (i.e., tiny) handle the object and expound on the issues and feel of the weapon? The model would have to reason like a (skilled) swordsperson to be able to be of use beyond establishing the physical limits. “Oh no, they could never have held them like that, because [jargon]. See? [demonstrate]”
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  Probably, because with modeling you can test a wide range of different hand+limb sizes and motions; you're not limited to the feedback from one tester, which, as the OP notes in its discussion of the "German" grip, might have preconceived notions about swordplay not shared by the Greeks. Modeling can be informed by real-world use, though, certainly.
- t-3 2y ago
  The assumption that many or most people using swords were skilled or had anything near formal training is probably wrong though. Most people who didn't make a living with weapons for generations probably learned to fight by wrestling and hitting each other with sticks like modern children still do, and learn the rest through practical experience.
  - jjk166 2y ago
    In the bronze age the only people who had swords were almost certainly making a living with the weapons. These were expensive items, comparable to a car in modern days - it wasn't astronomically out of reach but it would be a major purchase for anyone who wasn't rich. They were often intricately designed for aesthetics and were prized items. People who didn't fight for a living (and even many that did) would use much less expensive and skill intensive weapons.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ants_everywhere 2y ago
People were smaller, and also child soldiers have always been a thing. It would not be unheard of after battle to kill grown men, enslave the women, and force the boys to become soldiers. If this was common enough, we should see evidence of regiments of child soldiers with smaller weapons and armor. I'm sure historians consider this, but it's so unpleasant to think about that it slips most people's minds.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  I think if you are going to force the boys to serve in your military in order to further your conquest, you would probably not equip them with armor. Most of the anecdotes that I remember seem to suggest that you kill the men and boys as a boy will grow up to be a man who remembers what you did to him.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    More importantly (but even more unpleasant to think about) is boys grow up to want women, so by killing the boys you get more girls for your harem. (it would not be unusual for a 45 year old man to take a 14 year old girl). Girls from your tribe probably get some protection from the worst of this, but girls (and women) you capture from a different tribe are your to enjoy in whatever way you want.
    - hammock 2y ago
      A less cynical version of the same point is that fertile women are vital to the continuation of a tribe, while boys are expendable (and most valuable in war, verily)
    - isk517 2y ago
      I wonder how much was about building a harem compared to replacing women lost during childbirth.
    - o11c 2y ago
      We should be careful about statistics for "age at first marriage". Common flaws are to look only at "nobles" (who marry for political reasons), to look at the lowest recorded/permitted age as if it were typical, and to assume when menarche happens (which depends highly on nutrition). But one way or another, polygyny must necessarily be linked with killing men. The birth ratio is practically fixed in the absence of sex-selective abortion.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gadders 2y ago
No wonder Maximus Thrax stood out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_Thrax#Appearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_Thrax#Appearance
jollyllama 2y ago
The post https://www.patreon.com/posts/ergonomics-of-113167023 https://www.patreon.com/posts/ergonomics-of-113167023 referenced by The Article mentions this >The Mystery of the Short Grips > Many modern observers are puzzled by the small size of Bronze Age sword grips, to the extent that some researchers doubt their functionality in combat altogether. > The first question that often arises is whether Bronze Age warriors had smaller hands due to shorter body height. > While it is true that average body height was somewhat shorter, the difference is negligible. > The remains of victims found in the Tollense Valley show an average height of around 1.70 m. > This suggests that their hand bones might have been slightly smaller than those of modern men, but as prehistoric people engaged in various crafts and manual labour, their hands would have been far more muscular than those of most people living in Western civilisations today.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  > While it is true that average body height was somewhat shorter, the difference is negligible. > The remains of victims found in the Tollense Valley show an average height of around 1.70 m. The Tollense valley is in Germany, not Greece. In Greece, the average male height was (and still is!) a good deal shorter -- 162cm in the Bronze Age. This puts the Ancient Greek mean height in the modern 2nd percentile, which has hugely significant implications for hand breadth. I've checked against a US Army database, which you can see here: https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW Now imagine some of these swords were made for shorter-than-average men. A 3" grip would fit perfectly. It would not, however, fit in an average modern hand -- which could lead to very complex rationalizations as to how that short-gripped sword might have been used. Such rationalizations are ultimately misleading and unnecessary. For there's also a great deal of Bronze Age art that shows swords gripped quite normally. And this directly contravenes that Patreon post. See: https://periklisdeligiannis.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/vase-painti.jpg https://periklisdeligiannis.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads... https://www.thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/24766g.jpg https://www.thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/24766g.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4304/35874906211_62611c697c.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4304/35874906211_62611c697c.jp... https://thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/22103e.jpg https://thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/22103e.jpg Edited to add: I've checked this further. It's true that there are bronze swords from Germany and elsewhere that have been uncovered, of similar size and shape to bronze swords from the Hellenic world. Yet the average skeleton at Tollense appears to be 1.66m rather than 1.7m. > Based on measurements on the most commonly represented skeletal element in the Tollense Valley material, the left femur, individuals at Weltzin 20 were on average 1.66 m tall (ranging from 1.60 m to 1.73 m; calculation after Pearson 1899), a value comparable to results obtained for other Bronze Age sites (Siegmund 2010). (From "Warriorsʼ lives: the skeletal sample from the Bronze Age battlefield site in the Tollense Valley, north-eastern Germany" by Lidke et al.) Ultimately, I don't think that this changes anything. There's no evidence to support any need for complex rationalizations; smaller men used smaller weapons with shorter grips.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
"The proper way?" Where is your research published I'm curious about this approach.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  There's a lot of it. There's a "Digital Human Modeling" conference every year that publishes a summary of presentations as a ~600 page book. > https://2024.hci.international/dhm https://2024.hci.international/dhm There's a pretty good summary of the current state of the art here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119636113.ch29 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978111963611... This sort of modeling has become practically customary in many forms of product design.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    But for archeology? You're saying this is a standard way of understanding use of historical tools?
    - mendicott 2y ago
      > https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtualbeings/posts/1994869534311585/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtualbeings/posts/19948695... See also, Timeline of Museum-related Digital Human Activity, from the Virtual Beings Group Archives.
jjk166 2y ago
At the same time though, warriors would not be chosen at random from the population. In pretty much every society you get a warrior caste who first of all were descended from the victors of some battle or another, selecting for one end of the physiological spectrum. Then members of this class tend to interbreed, leading to a genetic predisposition towards height. They likewise often have better access to nutritious foods than people in lower castes, which helps achieve taller heights (and is the primary reason for modern tallness). Even from this warrior class, not everyone would actually wind up fighting - military units would further select the tallest and strongest to be their elite forces. So if you find a sword, it's a pretty safe bet the person who wielded it was taller than average for the time period.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  If anything, the analysis of skeletal remains has been criticized for the opposite reason. Here from the book "Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece": > "John Lawrence Angel, who in 1945 examined skeletal remains exhumed in Attica, put the average height of the Greek male in antiquity at no more than 162.2 cm, and of the female at 153.3 cm. It should be pointed out, however, that these data accrue from a rather scanty sample material: 61 male and 43 female skeletons from Attica, as against a total of 225 datable males and 132 females in all of Greece proper.39 Similar results accrue from Angel’s 1944 analysis of all ancient Greek skeletal remains known at the time: here, the result is given as 162.19 cm for males, with a range between extremes of 148 and 175 cm. The result for females overall remains the same. Angel, whose interest was primarily “racial” analysis, lists crania from Attica, Boiotia, Corinthia, and Macedonia; but unfortunately he does not indicate the distribution of more complete skeletons, which may have formed the basis for the calculations. Nevertheless it must be assumed that the average measurements actually represent the average, geographically as well as chronologically." > "The comparatively scanty material notwithstanding, we would be well advised to keep in mind that, in the words of Lin Foxhall and Hamish Forbes, “this sample may be biased in favour of higher socio-economic groups since it is the graves of the comparatively wealthy that are most likely to receive attention from archaeologists.” If this is accepted, it follows that the average Greek male was in fact likely less well nourished, and the skeletons examined by Angel may well belong in the absolute upper percentile." I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest that the skeletal remains of hoplites were substantially larger than the stated average. There are a few mass graves, e.g. at Himera, but I can find no height data. Perhaps they were taller by a couple of centimeters, but it strains credulity that it would amount to any more than that. For, as a rule, hoplites were freeholders and yeomen -- military service was a matter of social class and social standing -- they were not conscripted and sorted as though they were 18th century Austrians or Prussians: "Tall men to the halberdiers, short men to the artillery, giants to the Potsdam Giants." That wasn't the way of the Hellenes, and they wouldn't stand for it. The historical record is very clear on this point.

potato3732842 2y ago

You see this with all sorts of stuff. All sorts of machinery one would stand at and operate is short. The human spaces of things operated by crews are frequently too cramped for proper operation with the same size crew. Children in particular were way smaller back then so job duties and equipment customarily given to young teens and pre teens don't work with equivalent modern people even after controlling for waistline.

hprotagonist 2y ago
also, societies are generally just fine trading discomfort for profit. a fine example is ceiling height in colonial american homes: sure people were somewhat shorter then on average, but also and more importantly, smaller rooms are easier to heat, and the tall lumber is worth far too much to waste on stupid things like houses, so you suck it up and stoop when you’re indoors. interpreting the dimensions of historical goods is tricky.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Colonial American homes are not so short ceilinged that the average person, even today, needs to watch their heads. Ducking in doorways isn't a big deal. Yes, standards for comfort were different back then but you don't see things get built that are actively hard to use unless there is some very serious thing you get from the tradeoff (like the deck heights in ships) because things need to be used to produce results. In a world where stuff is expensive and labor is cheap things get build such that the ability to apply labor to them is not a bottleneck. For example a work station that can be effectively operated by larger people tends to permit smaller people to work really fast without conflicting as much if the situation demands it. Some tool that operates by human muscle power and is just the right balance of mechanical advantage vs speed for the smallest man in normal conditions can be worked by a woman or child in ideal circumstances or a normal may may be able to work it for extended hours under normal conditions. Whether the tradeoffs make sense depends on the application.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    Amusingly, though, modern homes sometimes are. When we were house shopping, we saw a house whose basement ceiling was perfectly serviceable, albeit maybe a little cramped, for the family living there - none of whom appeared to be over 5'6" - but I would have to stoop the entire time I was in the (fully finished! as an entertainment/living room!) basement. I think the ceiling was something like 5'10".
    - cafard 2y ago
      A college friend, about 5'2", married a guy 6'2" or 6'3". He had enough money that they had a house built, and the architect or builder put in a room just for her, where nobody over 5'6" or so could stand up straight. Frank Lloyd Wright was not tall. We toured a home he had built somewhere in LA, and I think that anyone over about 6'3" would have wanted to avoid thick-soled sneakers. I said to the docent, Not a lot of Lakers receptions here? He agreed.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Wood was plentiful and cheap in colonial America so tall lumber wasn't worth much more than shorter. You had to cut far more trees than the house and barns needed anyway (one reason log cabins were popular - they were made of waste) to make room for the fields. However it was still a lot of work to cut the wood (log cabins required you to square all the logs - round logs will roll off each other and make for large gaps, square the logs and they stack well and have smaller gaps between them - you could use round for the sides, but typically you wanted all 4 sides square to make nicer rooms), so you often would say good enough when the room was shorter just to avoid the labor. In Europe wood was much more expensive (they had been using it for 1000 years or so). The natives in America had different practices and so didn't typically use wood the way settlers did.
Mistletoe 2y ago
We went to Hot Springs Arkansas once and were upstairs in a historical gymnasium and it was hilarious how low everything was. Punching bags and rings and stuff that were about nose high and we were looking over the top of all of it. They said it was because everyone was so short back then. We take for granted all the advances in better nutrition and other things we just experienced in the 20th century. An unprecedented era in human history we don’t thank our lucky stars to have been born in enough. Some good discussions with references here. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ao9uhc/eli5_why_did_us_humans_become_way_taller_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ao9uhc/...
flir 2y ago
> Children in particular were way smaller back then I noticed this in the records of the Royal Navy in the 19th century - after a few years of the Navy feeding them, a lot of those kids had just shot up.

nabla9 2y ago

Franks, Arabs and others always commented how tall and beautiful Vikings/Norsemen were. They were on average about 170 - 174 cm, shorter than today.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
Yeah, that's not far from today's 50th percentile height in the US Army, which is 175.5cm. Our Ancient Greek would be in the second percentile. This has serious implications for hand breadth and how they might use a sword with a grip not far from 3" long. See: https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW (From "2012 Anthropometric Survey of US Army Personnel")
Tor3 2y ago
One data sample - the Norse settlements in Greenland: Average for men was 171cm, but many were 184-185 cm (wikipedia). Women's average height was 156 cm.
inglor_cz 2y ago
Several years ago, I visited Mikulčice, where the former capital of Great Moravia (9th century AD) was excavated. In the museum, most of the skeletons were < 170 cm. One, though, stood out at 183 cm. According to DNA, this skeleton belonged to a Nordic man.

Freak_NL 2y ago

Would anthropometric modeling result in a better analysis than letting someone proficient in swordplay of the right size (i.e., tiny) handle the object and expound on the issues and feel of the weapon? The model would have to reason like a (skilled) swordsperson to be able to be of use beyond establishing the physical limits. “Oh no, they could never have held them like that, because [jargon]. See? [demonstrate]”

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
Probably, because with modeling you can test a wide range of different hand+limb sizes and motions; you're not limited to the feedback from one tester, which, as the OP notes in its discussion of the "German" grip, might have preconceived notions about swordplay not shared by the Greeks. Modeling can be informed by real-world use, though, certainly.
t-3 2y ago
The assumption that many or most people using swords were skilled or had anything near formal training is probably wrong though. Most people who didn't make a living with weapons for generations probably learned to fight by wrestling and hitting each other with sticks like modern children still do, and learn the rest through practical experience.
- jjk166 2y ago
  In the bronze age the only people who had swords were almost certainly making a living with the weapons. These were expensive items, comparable to a car in modern days - it wasn't astronomically out of reach but it would be a major purchase for anyone who wasn't rich. They were often intricately designed for aesthetics and were prized items. People who didn't fight for a living (and even many that did) would use much less expensive and skill intensive weapons.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ants_everywhere 2y ago

People were smaller, and also child soldiers have always been a thing. It would not be unheard of after battle to kill grown men, enslave the women, and force the boys to become soldiers. If this was common enough, we should see evidence of regiments of child soldiers with smaller weapons and armor. I'm sure historians consider this, but it's so unpleasant to think about that it slips most people's minds.

themaninthedark 2y ago
I think if you are going to force the boys to serve in your military in order to further your conquest, you would probably not equip them with armor. Most of the anecdotes that I remember seem to suggest that you kill the men and boys as a boy will grow up to be a man who remembers what you did to him.
- bluGill 2y ago
  More importantly (but even more unpleasant to think about) is boys grow up to want women, so by killing the boys you get more girls for your harem. (it would not be unusual for a 45 year old man to take a 14 year old girl). Girls from your tribe probably get some protection from the worst of this, but girls (and women) you capture from a different tribe are your to enjoy in whatever way you want.
  - hammock 2y ago
    A less cynical version of the same point is that fertile women are vital to the continuation of a tribe, while boys are expendable (and most valuable in war, verily)
  - isk517 2y ago
    I wonder how much was about building a harem compared to replacing women lost during childbirth.
  - o11c 2y ago
    We should be careful about statistics for "age at first marriage". Common flaws are to look only at "nobles" (who marry for political reasons), to look at the lowest recorded/permitted age as if it were typical, and to assume when menarche happens (which depends highly on nutrition). But one way or another, polygyny must necessarily be linked with killing men. The birth ratio is practically fixed in the absence of sex-selective abortion.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

gadders 2y ago

No wonder Maximus Thrax stood out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_Thrax#Appearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_Thrax#Appearance

jollyllama 2y ago

The post https://www.patreon.com/posts/ergonomics-of-113167023 https://www.patreon.com/posts/ergonomics-of-113167023 referenced by The Article mentions this >The Mystery of the Short Grips > Many modern observers are puzzled by the small size of Bronze Age sword grips, to the extent that some researchers doubt their functionality in combat altogether. > The first question that often arises is whether Bronze Age warriors had smaller hands due to shorter body height. > While it is true that average body height was somewhat shorter, the difference is negligible. > The remains of victims found in the Tollense Valley show an average height of around 1.70 m. > This suggests that their hand bones might have been slightly smaller than those of modern men, but as prehistoric people engaged in various crafts and manual labour, their hands would have been far more muscular than those of most people living in Western civilisations today.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
> While it is true that average body height was somewhat shorter, the difference is negligible. > The remains of victims found in the Tollense Valley show an average height of around 1.70 m. The Tollense valley is in Germany, not Greece. In Greece, the average male height was (and still is!) a good deal shorter -- 162cm in the Bronze Age. This puts the Ancient Greek mean height in the modern 2nd percentile, which has hugely significant implications for hand breadth. I've checked against a US Army database, which you can see here: https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW Now imagine some of these swords were made for shorter-than-average men. A 3" grip would fit perfectly. It would not, however, fit in an average modern hand -- which could lead to very complex rationalizations as to how that short-gripped sword might have been used. Such rationalizations are ultimately misleading and unnecessary. For there's also a great deal of Bronze Age art that shows swords gripped quite normally. And this directly contravenes that Patreon post. See: https://periklisdeligiannis.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/vase-painti.jpg https://periklisdeligiannis.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads... https://www.thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/24766g.jpg https://www.thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/24766g.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4304/35874906211_62611c697c.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4304/35874906211_62611c697c.jp... https://thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/22103e.jpg https://thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/22103e.jpg Edited to add: I've checked this further. It's true that there are bronze swords from Germany and elsewhere that have been uncovered, of similar size and shape to bronze swords from the Hellenic world. Yet the average skeleton at Tollense appears to be 1.66m rather than 1.7m. > Based on measurements on the most commonly represented skeletal element in the Tollense Valley material, the left femur, individuals at Weltzin 20 were on average 1.66 m tall (ranging from 1.60 m to 1.73 m; calculation after Pearson 1899), a value comparable to results obtained for other Bronze Age sites (Siegmund 2010). (From "Warriorsʼ lives: the skeletal sample from the Bronze Age battlefield site in the Tollense Valley, north-eastern Germany" by Lidke et al.) Ultimately, I don't think that this changes anything. There's no evidence to support any need for complex rationalizations; smaller men used smaller weapons with shorter grips.

giraffe_lady 2y ago

"The proper way?" Where is your research published I'm curious about this approach.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
There's a lot of it. There's a "Digital Human Modeling" conference every year that publishes a summary of presentations as a ~600 page book. > https://2024.hci.international/dhm https://2024.hci.international/dhm There's a pretty good summary of the current state of the art here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119636113.ch29 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978111963611... This sort of modeling has become practically customary in many forms of product design.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  But for archeology? You're saying this is a standard way of understanding use of historical tools?
  - mendicott 2y ago
    > https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtualbeings/posts/1994869534311585/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtualbeings/posts/19948695... See also, Timeline of Museum-related Digital Human Activity, from the Virtual Beings Group Archives.

jjk166 2y ago

At the same time though, warriors would not be chosen at random from the population. In pretty much every society you get a warrior caste who first of all were descended from the victors of some battle or another, selecting for one end of the physiological spectrum. Then members of this class tend to interbreed, leading to a genetic predisposition towards height. They likewise often have better access to nutritious foods than people in lower castes, which helps achieve taller heights (and is the primary reason for modern tallness). Even from this warrior class, not everyone would actually wind up fighting - military units would further select the tallest and strongest to be their elite forces. So if you find a sword, it's a pretty safe bet the person who wielded it was taller than average for the time period.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
If anything, the analysis of skeletal remains has been criticized for the opposite reason. Here from the book "Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece": > "John Lawrence Angel, who in 1945 examined skeletal remains exhumed in Attica, put the average height of the Greek male in antiquity at no more than 162.2 cm, and of the female at 153.3 cm. It should be pointed out, however, that these data accrue from a rather scanty sample material: 61 male and 43 female skeletons from Attica, as against a total of 225 datable males and 132 females in all of Greece proper.39 Similar results accrue from Angel’s 1944 analysis of all ancient Greek skeletal remains known at the time: here, the result is given as 162.19 cm for males, with a range between extremes of 148 and 175 cm. The result for females overall remains the same. Angel, whose interest was primarily “racial” analysis, lists crania from Attica, Boiotia, Corinthia, and Macedonia; but unfortunately he does not indicate the distribution of more complete skeletons, which may have formed the basis for the calculations. Nevertheless it must be assumed that the average measurements actually represent the average, geographically as well as chronologically." > "The comparatively scanty material notwithstanding, we would be well advised to keep in mind that, in the words of Lin Foxhall and Hamish Forbes, “this sample may be biased in favour of higher socio-economic groups since it is the graves of the comparatively wealthy that are most likely to receive attention from archaeologists.” If this is accepted, it follows that the average Greek male was in fact likely less well nourished, and the skeletons examined by Angel may well belong in the absolute upper percentile." I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest that the skeletal remains of hoplites were substantially larger than the stated average. There are a few mass graves, e.g. at Himera, but I can find no height data. Perhaps they were taller by a couple of centimeters, but it strains credulity that it would amount to any more than that. For, as a rule, hoplites were freeholders and yeomen -- military service was a matter of social class and social standing -- they were not conscripted and sorted as though they were 18th century Austrians or Prussians: "Tall men to the halberdiers, short men to the artillery, giants to the Potsdam Giants." That wasn't the way of the Hellenes, and they wouldn't stand for it. The historical record is very clear on this point.