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The inherited factors of inhabitants of a given region change little over time without much outside factors such as war, intermarriage and famine/diseases. People were much shorter then than now. IIRC, the figure on the shroud is over six feet tall, which would practically make him a giant among the populace of the first century, including the Romans. According to first century Josephus, in his description of Jesus, he was not unlike anyone else in the crowd, which fits with the description of the prophecy of Isaiah:

Isaiah 53

1 Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
9 And they[a] made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul,[b]and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

The inherited factors of inhabitants of a given region change little over time without much outside factors such as war, intermarriage and famine/diseases. People were much shorter then than now. IIRC, the figure on the shroud is over six feet tall, which would practically make him a giant among the populace of the first century, including the Romans.

The Middle Eastern region, especially the Palestinian region, is one that has experienced some of the largest movements of people of any region on earth, including war and intermarriage. People were not "much" shorter then than now. That was in an era with abundant warmth and rain (the Roman Warm Period) and food was not scarce. The figure on the shroud was consistent with other male heights of that time and place.

The inherited factors of inhabitants of a given region change little over time without much outside factors such as war, intermarriage and famine/diseases. People were much shorter then than now. IIRC, the figure on the shroud is over six feet tall, which would practically make him a giant among the populace of the first century, including the Romans. According to first century Josephus, in his description of Jesus, he was not unlike anyone else in the crowd, which fits with the description of the prophecy of Isaiah:

This is one of those things that everyone knows... that is totally false. It is a canard always pushed by the skeptics based on the outlying figures pushed by "researchers" who have, at times estimated the height of the man on the Shroud as high as 6' 10" tall (Picknett and Price)... and then average that absurd idiocy, with more reasonable research, to come up with the 6'2" average of "researcher's estimates."

Actually, the figure on the Shroud is NOT over six feet tall. The most scientific of the studies done of the figure on the Shroud, the only peer-reviewed, and duplicated study, using actual measurements taken from the Shroud itself rather than from photographs and estimates by non-scientists, is the one done by Prof. Fanti, Marinello, Cagnazzo, et al, at Interdepartmental Center Space Studies and Activities of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Padua, Italy, "Computerized anthropometric analysis of the Man of the Turin Shroud". This work, an exhaustive analysis, using anthropometric standards for the genotypes of peoples of the mediterranean area, applied to the actual measurements of the contact areas of the shroud, concluded that the man depicted by the image was 174±2 cm ( 5 foot 8.5 inches plus or minus about .75 inch).

Another assumption that "everyone knows" that has been falsified by actual hands on research, is the "factoid" that 1st Century jews were of small stature. That falls apart when the real facts are uncovered by real science instead of assumptions based on 19th century anti-semitic claims. Archaeological censuses of male skeletons taken from 1st Century Jewish cemeteries in Jerusalem and surrounds found that the average mature male of the period was five foot 8 3/8 inches tall (Meacham). The man on the Shroud was only slightly taller than the average male Jew of the period. The average Roman of the period was 5 feet, 5" tall. He was well within the first sigma of a normal distribution curve.