[sarc]
I have been to the Netherlands and believe that the country’s unusual tallness is a result of self preservation. When the sea dyke breaks and the land floods, the tall people will be the only ones able to breath.
[/sarc]
“.. women stand almost five feet six inches tall...”
At five foot eight and a half inches... I must have come from the Amazons. :)
A 150 years of mass immigration in America, with the last 50 years being non-white, so we are comparing apples to Mexico and the orient.
It’s those wooden shoes. They just make the Dutch look taller.
Global warming.and evolution at work
.this is the Netherlands or lowlands all at low lying floodplains
The people have to grow taller because of the rising waters
I was only there once...but I couldn’t help but notice how tall some were. Several men over 6’6” and women at 6’. Perhaps a smaller population and tall folks oversampled? Who knows.
it is good to be tall
They may be tall, but they also have big butts and wear mom jeans.
There, I said it.
Dinaric Alps area - 6'1 (Balkans)
Dutch - 6'0
Montenegro - 6'0
Denmark - 6'0
Norway - 6'0
Sweden - 5'11 1/2
Serbia - 5'11 1/2
Germany - 5'11 1/2
Lithuania - 5'11 1/2
Rutabagas. You can’t walk a block in Dutchland without seeing five or six of them wolfing down rutabagas.
Floor Jansen
Just keep importing muslims, and everyone there will get to be about ten inches shorter.
America used to be the world’s tallest nation until 2007 when Holland passed us. In 1850 the average American was 2.5 inches taller than your average European. The change has mostly come from opening the floodgates to immigrants in the 1960s. We imported a lot of people shorter than the average American. No doubt better nutrition in other nations, especially Asia, has increased their height. But the biggest reason why America lost its standing as the tallest nation in 2007 is the simple importing of 10s of millions of immigrants over the past 50 years.
I was an exchange student in holland about 30 years ago. The Dutch were tall back then. I remember walking into a bar and being the shortest person there - and I am about 6’.
All the Dutch I knew smoked cigarettes, and drank beer and coffee, all day and night. I figured that is what made them so tall.
That so depressed them so much they stopped thinking about having sex. Naturally, it was the taller Dutch people who paid Randy Newman to write the song.
In fact the original lyrics Newman wrote were "short Dutch people, got no reason to live...etc." The word Dutch was excised for the American market.
Gehakt.
He means someTHING of a mystery.
Only paying for your own dinner on a date makes you taller.
I had always heard that the impact of the 1994 famine had a permanent impact on the size of the Dutch for subsequent generations.
Dutch Famine of 1944
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944