And the average height of a someone from a *relevant* ethnic group was... what? Remember, if you don't like using a hypothetical "patch" as a data point, then why use a clearly irrelevant ethnic group to guage normal height? Why not a Masai or a Viking?
If a Roman, given decent food and medical care, was 5'8", then a poor Judean sheperd-descendant should have been a little dinky guy. Height like 5'10" should have been tall enough to merit mention.
What exactly is not relevant about skeletons disinterred from a JEWISH 1ST CENTURY CEMETARY IN JERUSALEM? I didn't use a Viking or a Masai warrior because they are totally irrelevant. Skeletons from the vicinity of Jerusalem, in a Jewish cemetary, showing signs of a traditional Jewish burial would seem to me to be the very population we should be using for comparison. Anthropological studies of these skeletons of mature semitic men found an average height of 5 foot 9 inches. Incidentally, the research on the skeletons had nothing to do with studies of the Shroud.
The data on the average heights come from the world's leading expert on the topic, unrelated to Shroud studies. Dr. Stanley Ulijaszek, PhD., Fellow of St. Cross College, and Faculty of the Institute of Biological Anthropology, Archaeology and Anthropology at the Universith of Oxford, perhaps the world's foremost expert on Human Ecology, and editor of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Growth & Development, Cambridge Press, reports in the Encyclopedia:
The average height of males calculated from bones found in 1st through 4th Century Jerusalem graves is 5' 9". and further documents . . . the average Roman soldier (c. 300BC - 120 AD) was 5' 7 3/4" and the average Italian (c. 1980) 5' 8 3/4".AS I pointed out, the average American male today is 5 foot 9.25 inches. The normal range of heights for those American males is between 5'5" and 6'2". Assuming that semitic men have a similar height distribution, 5 foot 10" would not have been an extraordinary heighth. 1st Century Judea was a net exporter of food, wine and grain. It was, if you recall, the "Land of Milk and Honey" and its people ate well. What do you think "shepherds" ate? Perhaps they ate mutton? Bread? Grapes? Drank wine?The populace was well fed and industrious. They were not "little, dinky guys."
How do you get a leg thats straight in front and bent in back, all at the same time?
How do you know it was "straight"? The fact that the Shroud shows this strange quality of both, is more proof that the Shroud is a genuine gravecloth.
This is going to be a bit long, but bear with me, Orion. Like most apparently obvious things on the Shroud, it isn't obvious or easy.
Orion, the basic problem is that the human mind, yours and mine included, expects to see the Shroud as a photograph. We infer SHADOWS and our minds interpret shadow to represent changes in depth or position because that is what we see in the lighted world.
But, Orion, the Shroud is NOT a photograph. There is no light to be shadowed; no shadow to be processed by our minds into positional information; but our minds STILL want to see it as we expect to see it and process it as such.
Instead, the Shroud is a fairly accurate topographical map of the body it covered, with image intensity providing a proportional indicator of the distance of body to shroud surface. This is why the VP-8 Image Analyzer converts the data into a quasi-three dimensional representation; something that cannot be done with a photograph.
The fact is that the frontal image portion of the shroud drapes over the body to a certain degree, following the contour of the body. The shroud touches some parts of the body that are higher than others, and spans the parts that are lower. If the shroud vertically follows the leg, then the "topographic map" will show only relative distance of body-to-shroud, not body distance to some fixed plane like you would get with a flat photographic plate. This means that we really can not know how high the knees were from the information in the frontal image. Since both legs were approximately equal distance from the shroud part that covers that leg, the image intensity appears to be equal, giving the FALSE impression that the legs are equally "straight".
Consider the situation of having a laprobe on your legs as you sit in a chair. The laprobe is always touching your legs. An image is somehow formed of your legs from top thigh to ankle with essentially equal intensity related to the distance. Unfold the laprobe and you will see an image of what appears to be straight legs, even though, when the image was made, your legs were bent at the knee.
The dorsal image portion of the shroud, the lower cloth which probably was spreadout on a flat stone surface, IS much more like a flat photographic plate than the upper frontal image portion of the shroud which tends to follow the contours of the supine body. This can be seen in the flattened buttocks and shoulders on the dorsal image. Distance from surface of the stone to body on the dorsal image CAN be inferred from the Shroud.
Now we must include the other fact that must be considered. According to every forensic pathologist who has examined the image, the body was in rigor mortis. While it has been straightened as well as possible by the people who placed it on the shroud, when it was on the cross, however, one foot was placed on top of the other to be nailed. It stayed in that position for some time, and was still in that position when rigor set in.
Because of this, the lower body image exhibits some "twist" that is not apparent on the UPPER shroud image because of the topographic mapping nature of the Shroud, but is apparent in the LOWER shroud image where the body-to-shroud distance is roughly equivalent to body-to-flat-rock distance.
The leg that was on top (on the cross) would tend to STILL be forward of the leg that was behind and gravity would create this twist... but the top shroud would not and could not show it because of the drape and distance limits of the image formation.
The leg that was forward, still stiff in rigor, would not press equally as hard on the lower, flat plane portion of the Shroud as the leg that was behind, providing less contact and giving the impression on the Shroud image that the leg was somewhat "bent"... but the weight of the shroud on TOP of the leg would tend to equalize between supporting contacts on the body so that the legs were approximately "equally" distant from their respective portions of the Shroud, giving the impression of being "straight."
Well, Orion, if you're still with me, we got to the end... I hope the trip was worth it.