3 ms·

Meta-analyses such as the 2023 study need a lot of attention to interpret correctly, and I can't spare that time right now. Have you read the 2005 study? Note

Meta-analyses such as the 2023 study need a lot of attention to interpret correctly, and I can't spare that time right now. Have you read the 2005 study? Note 25 of the 1945 article says that its stature estimates are based on a total of 63 males from all periods, but when Angel returned to the problem in 1985 he cited 52 males from the classical period alone, so clearly he had acquired more data. There are many different ways of estimating stature by measuring bones and best practices may have changed from 1945 to 1985. Here is the table 4 from his 1985 article. https://www.bookandsword.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screenshot-from-2024-10-25-13-51-38.png https://www.bookandsword.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Scre...

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
Fascinating. Thanks for digging that up. Let's say we have 95% confidence for a range between 162-170cm through the entire Iron Age, continuing through the Classical period. I believe that could still plausibly make for a substantial enough difference in hand breadth -- plausibly >1cm -- such that grips that seem unusually small today would have seemed merely snug back then. It's also possible that certain relic swords were designed to fit users who were under the mean height of their era. (Even, in some cases where grips were smaller than 7cm in length, adolescents.)
- pixodaros 2y ago
  You might think so, but if you do the math, the difference between 165 cm tall and 180 cm tall scaled to an 8 cm wide hand is only 7 mm. And Roland is rather tall, so if he can hold a sword in a certain way, smaller people certainly could! He has addressed this in earlier posts like https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-were-bronze-110099337 https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-were-bronze-110099337
  - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
    I have US Military data on soldier height and hand breadth. (Interestingly, height seems to skew a little bit short.) It's at: https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW So say a sword was made for a more or less average Greek, at 165cm, placing him in the modern Army's 5th percentile. His hand is 8.1cm wide, diagonally, at the knuckle. A 180cm man is in the modern 75th percentile, and his hand is 9.1cm wide. There's a 1cm or nearly 1/2" difference. My own hand is ~9.8cm wide at the knuckle (which means that shopping for gloves is a real pain,) and would be nearly 2cm wider than that average Greek's. A short Greek, say at around 160cm, might be under 7.7cm in hand breadth; there'd be more than 2cm between us. So there can be quite a lot of variance. It doesn't appear to scale with height in a totally linear way. In the context of sword grips, 1cm is a lot and 2cm is huge. Ian Peirce's book "Swords of the Viking Age" gives grip length data on a few dozen 8th-11th century swords, and the average is just 8.58cm. (With a couple as high as 11cm and one as low as 6.8cm, but almost all examples in a narrow range between 8 and 9.5cm.) Swords of the Naue II type, made for men somewhat shorter than 10th century Norsemen, seem to cluster around 7-8cm of usable grip length. Perhaps this is just what we'd expect to see, if we operate under the assumption that, like those Norsemen, they liked their grips very snug and weren't in the habit of wearing gauntlets. Anyway, this thread is buried and it's getting hard to keep up with. I'd be happy to discuss further via email. Mine is on my user id page. Maybe, between the two of us, we can solve this mystery.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

Fascinating. Thanks for digging that up. Let's say we have 95% confidence for a range between 162-170cm through the entire Iron Age, continuing through the Classical period. I believe that could still plausibly make for a substantial enough difference in hand breadth -- plausibly >1cm -- such that grips that seem unusually small today would have seemed merely snug back then. It's also possible that certain relic swords were designed to fit users who were under the mean height of their era. (Even, in some cases where grips were smaller than 7cm in length, adolescents.)

pixodaros 2y ago
You might think so, but if you do the math, the difference between 165 cm tall and 180 cm tall scaled to an 8 cm wide hand is only 7 mm. And Roland is rather tall, so if he can hold a sword in a certain way, smaller people certainly could! He has addressed this in earlier posts like https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-were-bronze-110099337 https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-were-bronze-110099337
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  I have US Military data on soldier height and hand breadth. (Interestingly, height seems to skew a little bit short.) It's at: https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW So say a sword was made for a more or less average Greek, at 165cm, placing him in the modern Army's 5th percentile. His hand is 8.1cm wide, diagonally, at the knuckle. A 180cm man is in the modern 75th percentile, and his hand is 9.1cm wide. There's a 1cm or nearly 1/2" difference. My own hand is ~9.8cm wide at the knuckle (which means that shopping for gloves is a real pain,) and would be nearly 2cm wider than that average Greek's. A short Greek, say at around 160cm, might be under 7.7cm in hand breadth; there'd be more than 2cm between us. So there can be quite a lot of variance. It doesn't appear to scale with height in a totally linear way. In the context of sword grips, 1cm is a lot and 2cm is huge. Ian Peirce's book "Swords of the Viking Age" gives grip length data on a few dozen 8th-11th century swords, and the average is just 8.58cm. (With a couple as high as 11cm and one as low as 6.8cm, but almost all examples in a narrow range between 8 and 9.5cm.) Swords of the Naue II type, made for men somewhat shorter than 10th century Norsemen, seem to cluster around 7-8cm of usable grip length. Perhaps this is just what we'd expect to see, if we operate under the assumption that, like those Norsemen, they liked their grips very snug and weren't in the habit of wearing gauntlets. Anyway, this thread is buried and it's getting hard to keep up with. I'd be happy to discuss further via email. Mine is on my user id page. Maybe, between the two of us, we can solve this mystery.