Posted on 09/01/2004 12:02:19 PM PDT by ckilmer
MEN FROM EARLY MIDDLE AGES WERE NEARLY AS TALL AS MODERN PEOPLE COLUMBUS, Ohio – Northern European men living during the early Middle Ages were nearly as tall as their modern-day American descendants, a finding that defies conventional wisdom about progress in living standards during the last millennium.
Richard Steckel "Men living during the early Middle Ages (the ninth to 11th centuries) were several centimeters taller than men who lived hundreds of years later, on the eve of the Industrial Revolution," said Richard Steckel, a professor of economics at Ohio State University and the author of a new study that looks at changes in average heights during the last millennium.
"Height is an indicator of overall health and economic well-being, and learning that people were so well-off 1,000 to 1,200 years ago was surprising," he said.
Steckel analyzed height data from thousands of skeletons excavated from burial sites in northern Europe and dating from the ninth to the 19th centuries. Average height declined slightly during the 12th through 16th centuries, and hit an all-time low during the 17th and 18th centuries.
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"Height is an indicator of overall health and economic well-being, and learning that people were so well-off 1,000 to 1,200 years ago was surprising," he said. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Northern European men had lost an average 2.5 inches of height by the 1700s, a loss that was not fully recovered until the first half of the 20th century.
Steckel believes a variety of factors contributed to the drop – and subsequent regain – in average height during the last millennium. These factors include climate change; the growth of cities and the resulting spread of communicable diseases; changes in political structures; and changes in agricultural production.
"Average height is a good way to measure the availability and consumption of basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, medical care and exposure to disease," Steckel said. "Height is also sensitive to the degree of inequality between populations."
The study appears in a recent issue of the journal Social Science History.
Steckel analyzed skeletal data from 30 previous studies. The bones had been excavated from burial sites in northern European countries, including Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Great Britain and Denmark. In most cases, the length of the femur, or thighbone, was used to estimate skeletal height. The longest bone in the body, the femur comprises about a quarter of a person's height.
According to Steckel's analysis, heights decreased from an average of 68.27 inches (173.4 centimeters) in the early Middle Ages to an average low of roughly 65.75 inches (167 cm) during the 17th and 18th centuries.
"This decline of two-and-a-half inches substantially exceeds any height fluctuations seen during the various industrial revolutions of the 19th century," Steckel said.
Reasons for such tall heights during the early Middle Ages may have to do with climate. Steckel points out that agriculture from 900 to 1300 benefited from a warm period – temperatures were as much as 2 to 3 degrees warmer than subsequent centuries. Theoretically, smaller populations had more land to choose from when producing crops and raising livestock.
"The temperature difference was enough to extend the growing season by three to four weeks in many settled regions of northern Europe," Steckel said. "It also allowed for cultivation of previously unavailable land at higher elevations."
Also, populations were relatively isolated during the Middle Ages – large cities were absent from northern Europe until the late Middle Ages. This isolation in the era before effective public health measures probably helped to protect people from communicable diseases, Steckel said.
"It is notable that bubonic plague made its dramatic appearance in the late Middle Ages, when trade really took off," he said.
Steckel cites several possible reasons why height declined toward the end of the Middle Ages:
The climate changed rather dramatically in the 1300s, when the Little Ice Age triggered a cooling trend that wreaked havoc on northern Europe for the following 400 to 500 years. Colder temperatures meant lower food production as well as greater use of resources for heating. But many temperature fluctuations, ranging in length from about 15 to 40 years, kept people from fully adapting to a colder climate, Steckel said.
"These brief periods of warming disguised the long-term trend of cooler temperatures, so people were less likely to move to warmer regions and were more likely to stick with traditional farming methods that ultimately failed," he said. "Climate change was likely to have imposed serious economic and health costs on northern Europeans, which in turn may have caused a downward trend in average height."
Urbanization and the growth of trade gained considerable momentum in the 16th and 17th centuries. Both brought people together, which encouraged the spread of disease. And global exploration and trade led to the worldwide diffusion of many diseases into previously isolated areas.
"Height studies for the late 18th and early 19th centuries show that large cities were particularly hazardous for health," Steckel said. "Urban centers were reservoirs for the spread of communicable diseases."
Inequality in Europe grew considerably during the 16th century and stayed high until the 20th century – the rich grew richer from soaring land rents while the poor paid higher prices for food, housing and land. "In poor countries, or among the poor in moderate-income nations, large numbers of people are biologically stressed or deprived, which can lead to stunted growth," Steckel said. "It's plausible that growing inequality could have increased stress in ways that reduced average heights in the centuries immediately following the Middle Ages."
Political changes and strife also brought people together as well as put demand on resources. "Wars decreased population density, which could be credited with improving health, but at a large cost of disrupting production and spreading disease," Steckel said. "Also, urbanization and inequality put increasing pressure on resources, which may have helped lead to a smaller stature."
Exactly why average height began to increase during the 18th and 19th centuries isn't completely clear, but Steckel surmises that climate change as well as improvements in agriculture helped.
"Increased height may have been due partly to the retreat of the Little Ice Age, which would have contributed to higher yields in agriculture. Also improvements in agricultural productivity that began in the 18th century made food more plentiful to more people.
This study is part of the Global History of Health Project, an initiative funded by the National Science Foundation to analyze human health throughout the past 10,000 years.
Steckel wants to continue looking at, and interpreting, fluctuations in height across thousands of years
"I want to go much further back in time and look at more diverse populations to see if this general relationship holds over 10,000 years," he said.
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Contact: Richard Steckel, (614) 292–5008; steckel.1@osu.edu Written by Holly Wagner, (614) 292-8310; wagner.235@osu.edu
My family comes from Russia. Arrived between 1900-1912 and settled mostly in Fresno. Height was from 4'10" to 5'6" women to men. Average around 5' to 5'3"...I don't know of many immigrants who were much taller, although today, the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren are giants compared to them.
People build according to their size and needs. Door frames, beds, etc or igloos....
The Northern Chinese diet will contain more beef and lamb than a southern diet based on fish and pork.
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The Little Ice Age:
How Climate Made History 1300-1850
by Brian M. Fagan
PaperbackFloods, Famines, and Emperors:
El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations
by Brian M. FaganThe Long Summer:
How Climate Changed Civilization
by Brian M. Fagan
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I thought of that, too. However, the surviving armor is almost all plate from the 15th-17th centuries. Before the 14th century (when the climate changes happened), the armor was mostly chainmail (with bits of plate and helms) of which little has survived. Perhaps an interesting comparison would be sword length -- since a taller person would use a longer sword, ceterus paribus. I don't recall whether early medieval broadswords were longer than later medieval broadswords, but again, far fewer examples from before 1400 survive.
So, what you're saying is that the Kennedys got there first and already had the liquor racket all sewed up, so the Pilgrims had no choice but Massachusetts?
Combination sword length and weight?
He forgot air pollution.
right
Modernity began with widespread war and tyranny, with huge long term inflation (related to imports from the Americas but also to domestic misgovernment in economic matters), and with a revolution in domestic institutions that destroyed much of the social structure of the middle ages. The church was looted over half of Europe, the monastaries and poor houses were sacked. Tyrants bent entirely on self promotion waged war on their own disloyal populations. Every sect and creed but the Quakers wanted all the others lynched.
The damning facts about all parties concerned were tracked down by Acton. The economic results are clearly visible in long term real price data collected by economic historians like Gould. The wars themselves are chronicled in detail by military and political historians like Parker.
For a long time, "whig history" presented all of this as some great liberation from an imaginary monolithic "kingdom of darkness" run by Rome. So much so that tyrants like Henry VIII were treated as heros, bloodthirsty sectarians as visionary proponents of religious freedom, etc.
In the 12th and 13th centuries both major sects in European politics - fighting over the issue of secular vs. church power - agreed on appeal to and representation of the people, and limited monarchy under law. Thomas Acquinas did, and so did Marsilius of Padua, a Ghibelline supporter of emperors against popes. Far from a monolith, the church was a political football, with 3 popes simultaneously at times, exile to Avignon, turmoil in Italian politics etc. This was the "High middle ages", the first renaissance, the age of Dante and Acquinas.
Anybody who likes can argue it was "worth it" or "necessary", though actually there is little enough evidence of that. But there is no serious historical dispute, that civilization-wide retrogression and chaos separate the high middle ages from the age of the enlightenment. The middle age to modernity divide was not an instance of "progress" as later experienced in the 19th century.
That was a backward projection, long after the fact. Even the definite advances of the 18th century - which were real and important - were marred at the end by 25 years of great power war from the French revolution to the fall of Napoleon - wars that killed millions. The long peace and accelerating economic progress that showed the real promise of modern democratic government and economic liberalism did not show up in earnest until the 19th century. Before that, it was localized and spotty, checked repeatedly by political turmoil and war.
So called "whig history" consisted in going back to the renaissance and seeing every development on the way to mid 19th century liberal democracy in England as some straight line ascent to all that was right and true. The distance of any institution or position from that endpoint was substituted for any real measure of its effects in its own time. If some development seemed to be tugging toward the institutions of England in 1870, then it was a primary good. If anything was opposed to any aspect of that direction of change, it was bad, and anything attacking it secondarily good.
This procedure results in ahistorical distortions. A tyrant is imagined to be progressive because he loots monasteries, because monasteries are not important institutions in 1870 England. The fact that doing so despoiled the funds that gave charity to the poor, to amass large fortunes in the hands of the tyrant's noble cronies - or were spent on dynastic struggles and foreign wars - is simply not considered important.
19th century liberal England was certainly much better than high middle ages Europe generally, in all sorts of objective measures. But that does not mean every step from one to the other was upward. They weren't. The series is not (remotely) monotonic.
As a person from a ranching state, you would also have support for this from the fact that antibiotics are used to improve cattle health, with the result that they grow larger.
Yes, of course, but knight's tactics were fairly consistent from the 11th through 15th centuries.
They went from wearing chain and using shields to wearing plate in place of shields. They went from always fighting mounted to regularly dismounting to fight on foot. Swords when from slashing weapons meant for mounted combat against light troops to thrusting weapons meant to piece weak points at the joints of plate. Much larger two handed varieties for anti-cavalry fighting appeared. Pikes, crossbows, and longbows, in their infantry opponents were all introduced and perfected after the one and before the other. The battle of Hastings and the battle of Agincourt were not the same.
Even if the swords were closely proportionate to the user's height when new, they might well tend to become shortened over time due to regrinding to remove battle damage.
I am somewhat surprised that medeival man was nearly the same height as we are now on average. I wonder what the life expectancy was then? As for greenhouse effect, I heard several years ago that a single volcanic eruption like Mt. Saint Helens releases more CO2 into the atmosphere than all human activities since the beginning of civilization.
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