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MEN FROM EARLY MIDDLE AGES WERE NEARLY AS TALL AS MODERN PEOPLE
eurekalert.com ohio state university ^ | Richard Steckel

Posted on 09/01/2004 12:02:19 PM PDT by ckilmer

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To: OESY

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....


61 posted on 09/01/2004 1:40:04 PM PDT by Prost1 (Why isn't Berger in jail?)
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Comment #62 Removed by Moderator

To: reed13

The Northern Chinese diet will contain more beef and lamb than a southern diet based on fish and pork.


63 posted on 09/01/2004 1:42:59 PM PDT by Sam the Sham
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To: marron; ckilmer; SunkenCiv
Good article, thanks

GGG Ping.

64 posted on 09/01/2004 2:46:21 PM PDT by blam
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Shorter and rounder holds the heat better, generally speaking (less surface area per unit volume). The Neandertal forebears of us Europeans had longer torsos, which is a characteristic of Lapps (for example). One reason women last longer in freezing water (other than overall height) is proportionately longer torsos. The Little Ice Age kicked in during the early 13th century. It began with nasty, colder, rainy springs that wrecked planting, and led to massive starvation in Europe. During the medieval warming agriculture spread to higher altitudes and latitudes than is possible today, and ocean levels rose (unlike today).
The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization
The Little Ice Age:
How Climate Made History 1300-1850

by Brian M. Fagan
Paperback
Floods, Famines, and Emperors:
El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations

by Brian M. Fagan
The Long Summer:
How Climate Changed Civilization

by Brian M. Fagan
GGG ping to follow.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest
-- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

65 posted on 09/02/2004 7:50:57 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Unlike some people, I have a profile. Okay, maybe it's a little large...)
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To: ckilmer; blam; FairOpinion; Ernest_at_the_Beach; SunkenCiv; 24Karet; 4ConservativeJustices; ...
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest
-- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

66 posted on 09/02/2004 7:53:07 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Unlike some people, I have a profile. Okay, maybe it's a little large...)
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To: 2banana
every knight's armor I have ever seen is built for smaller men - and they would have been the ones to live a "good" life.

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.

67 posted on 09/02/2004 8:01:44 AM PDT by CatoRenasci (Ceterum Censeo Arabiam Esse Delendam -- Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit)
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Oops, sorry, I meant "early 14th century." [blush] The cooling began earlier, the starvation began in 1315. A hundred years earlier [the leftmost title, beginning p 29] early frosts and crop failures led to severe starvation in Poland and Russia; later in the 13th (not 14th) century "Alpine glaciers advanced for the first time in centuries" and there were frozen rivers during the winters for the first time in (probably) centuries.

Between 1350 and 1380, in Iceland, "sea ice came so close to land that Greenland polar bears came ashore." [p 9]

68 posted on 09/02/2004 8:10:49 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Unlike some people, I have a profile. Okay, maybe it's a little large...)
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To: blam
Thanks blam.
69 posted on 09/02/2004 8:11:45 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Unlike some people, I have a profile. Okay, maybe it's a little large...)
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To: wyattearp

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?


70 posted on 09/02/2004 8:25:55 AM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: CatoRenasci
I don't recall whether early medieval broadswords were longer than later medieval broadswords, but again, far fewer examples from before 1400 survive.

Combination sword length and weight?

71 posted on 09/02/2004 9:20:14 AM PDT by 4CJ (||) Our sins put Him on the Cross, His love for us kept Him there (||)
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To: ckilmer

He forgot air pollution.


72 posted on 09/02/2004 9:23:02 AM PDT by Old Professer (The enemy is among us; he is us; we know it, we dare not say it - someone will be offended.)
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To: 4ConservativeJustices

right


73 posted on 09/02/2004 9:47:48 AM PDT by CatoRenasci (Ceterum Censeo Arabiam Esse Delendam -- Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit)
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To: ckilmer
No, it is not climate. If anyone has read Gould's "Economic Growth in History", or heard of the Price Revolution, or read Acton on early modern Europe instead of the usual Whig history and protestant triumphalist line, they are unsurprised. From 1500 to 1700, Europe was in a dark age, not a great flowering.

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.

74 posted on 09/02/2004 9:56:04 AM PDT by JasonC
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To: CatoRenasci
No, doesn't follow. The primary determinant of sword length is not a man's height, but how the sword was used, tactically. Swords meant for fighting from horseback against infantry are not the same as swords meant for infantry with shields trying to get inside the reach of other infantry with spears, and neither are the same as swords meant for aristocratic dueling one on one, in little of no armor. Tactics change with every shift in weapons, armor, and the social organization and mobilization of armies. They will bounce around like hem lengths, not track average height.
75 posted on 09/02/2004 9:59:59 AM PDT by JasonC
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To: TexanToTheCore
Lack of chronic disease is the most important factor.

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.

76 posted on 09/02/2004 10:00:47 AM PDT by happygrl
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To: JasonC

Yes, of course, but knight's tactics were fairly consistent from the 11th through 15th centuries.


77 posted on 09/02/2004 10:27:49 AM PDT by CatoRenasci (Ceterum Censeo Arabiam Esse Delendam -- Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit)
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To: CatoRenasci
No, not remotely.

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.

78 posted on 09/02/2004 11:52:48 AM PDT by JasonC
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To: CatoRenasci

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.


79 posted on 09/02/2004 12:04:58 PM PDT by Mackey (By their works you shall know them.)
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To: beezdotcom

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.


80 posted on 09/02/2004 7:34:29 PM PDT by rdl6989 (Kerry voted for the war before he voted against it?)
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