[escapefromboston]

i'll read this later

[Rutles4Ever]

Next they're going to say there's no such thing as Global Warming!

[marron]

ping

[2banana]

Does not sound right - 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.

[wideawake]

I'm going to say that people in the early Middle Ages ate a lot more meat on average than city dwellers in the late Middle Ages who ate mostly grain.

Eating protein in the adolescent years is important.

[cripplecreek]

At 39 years old I consider myself to be "early middle aged". I was just as tall this morning as I am now.

[hankbrown]

Don't care.

[FreedomFarmer]

I'm a male in early middle age, but I'm taller than modern college researchers.

[reed13]

I find issue with the conclusions of the report in that it does not address a well-known dietetic issue related to Chinese height variance. In the northern climes of China where wheat is more prevalent the heights are statistically superior to those in the southern climes where rice is the prevalent staple.

The findings sound plausible, but I believe that the conclusions are unsupported.

I could understand an argument that states inferior/reduced agricultural production later in history led to a decline in height. However, what I see here is an evolutionary assumption that 'as production capabilities increased man's height must also increase' being challenged. Correlation does not make for causation. Therefore the conclusions are unsupported within the article as presented.

[T Minus Four]

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

Well, we certainly know who to blame for THIS!

[Prost1]

I could have saved the guy lots of effort...
The buildings in Germany from the 1000's (ie. Goslar) have doors around 5'x2.5'. Armor from that period is not much larger, for individuals around 5'3".
The beds made for miners in Gold Rush California (1850's) are only about 5' length (ie. Columbia State Park or Bodie).
Karl the Great (Charlemagne) was considered average height at 5'6" in the 800's. He was nobility and Emperor.
Poor have been small until recently, rich have been taller.
More fish and flesh, more height, more starch - less.
The guy could have checked the cemetaries - sarcophaguses...plotted sizes from northern Europe to Italy...

I hope his study wasn't govenment funded.

[Stellar Dendrite]

bump

[Constitution Day]

Ping.

[saveliberty]

I will rewrite the title as understood by a typical college freshman

Middle Aged Men are Nearly as Tall and Modern

[68skylark]

Interesting -- ping for later reading.

[Centurion2000]

bump for middle ages atkins eaters.

[VadeRetro]

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.

The people those Vikings were plundering were probably less well-fed and shorter.

[Sam Cree]

read later

[Lazamataz]

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.

Only after the Rack.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Can they be certain that graves from the 1500's and 1600's are representative of the population as a whole? Maybe the prosperous were more likely to be buried in marked graveyards.