elenakulikova
ID: PWDQU9C3
Member 1251
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(F, 23)
Amsterdam, NL
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    are humans getting taller?


    it's crossed my mind several times, the height of human beings seems to be growing. is that my perception or is it really true? I would love to know if anyone has answers ... I researched it a bit, but what really makes me wonder is the lineage of my family and friend's families ... the offspring always seems to be taller than their parents.

    I'm taller than my mother and I think just by a hair may be taller than my father, my brother is taller than any of us ... and my mother is taller than my grandmother ... of course as age sometimes 'debilitates' our form our parents ‘shrink’ overtime … but still, it seems children are getting taller. Even visiting museums and seeing ancient bones, they are all such a short height. ‘ Lucy’ I read stood only 3’ 8” tall. When I asked my biology teacher a few years ago in class, he said that humans were actually getting shorter because to our advantage of survival we want to be short for faster and easier blood circulation … I dismissed the fact, but just remembered it recently again .. I would love to hear other people’s opinions … surely living in Amsterdam is maybe getting to me because almost everyone here is above you in height .. I’m just throwing this thought out there, for fun, on a slow Sunday afternoon ..


    + Height
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    + Lucy


    Sun, Mar 9, 2008  Permanent link
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    First Dark     Fri, Oct 17, 2008  Permanent link
    I can't help but think that there is some major flaw in the way that this site works when I keep coming across questions posed by other members which after many months remain completely devoid of responses... Perhaps, as with me, most other members are usually too preoccupied with other things to peruse much of this site... Or maybe we just need a separate section or project for submitting questions / posts with questions. Regardless, this sort of thing bothers me quite a bit.. So anyway, you pose an interesting question.

    From my limited understanding, our evolutionary history has shown a gradual increase in height. However, once you get to homo sapiens sapiens, there are both significant increases and decreases in height depending upon which region and culture you look at. Where a population lives and what sorts of activities they participate in may gradually cause their height averages to go up or down, or stay about the same. Within families, I would think genetics make things more complicated... I'm sure it would be easy to find just as many people who, based upon their family experience, think that humans are getting shorter, and some who don't think much is changing at all.

    I also remember hearing at some point that people were shorter during the Dark Ages. Here's something I found (doesn't have any citations unfortunately, but it makes a lot of sense):

    It is commonly believed that during the Dark Ages people were shorter than today. Recent studies conducted to British skeletons have shown some very interesting results. First of all, peasants were on average shorter than nobles. This helds true because of the poor nutrition to which peasants were subject to whilst nobles had a better nutrition and a much better way of life (including enough sleep and other necessary factors for growth).

    A person was on average slightly shorter than today. During the XII century, taller people lived but this declined slowly in the following centuries until the XVIII century when the shortest people of the millennium existed. The reason is debated, though some believe that food and plague contributed to this phenomenon.

    A recent study based on twins shows that 90% of a person's height is inherited whilst the 10% is based purely in environmental factors. While this difference might seem minor at a first glance, it is to be considered that a person who should have been 6' would be only 5'3. This makes evident that if medieval people had had a good nutrition, they would be as tall as we are today.


    More here


    That's about as much as I can offer on this subject, but at least now you've got one response!
    elenakulikova     Fri, Oct 17, 2008  Permanent link
    thank you for comment about the growth ... very interesting .. I'm very curious how humans will look in the future .. as we evolve and our body changes to our space / environment ..
    I also agree on how we're able to interact on this site ... most current questions and posts are pushed to the top and people favourite .. what interests the mass public? well, we always find a way and tweak .. so .. lets experiment ..
    WarpedREVolution     Mon, Oct 20, 2008  Permanent link
    Not responding or commenting on posts does not mean I am not reading them and finding them fascinating. Sometimes an article is just a think piece, and you will find a lot of questions posted on here are more thought provoking than demanding actual answers immediately. Many many things I read about on Space Collective I do my own research into. Adding information to a thread is one way I suppose I can contribute, otherwise I find a lot of the threads to be food for thought that will come up again in corresponding moments of life.

    It is very interesting how thoughts travel.. but for me this is a place that serves as a stimulating input that adds fuel to the fire for the machine running in my head. Everything will eventually come full circle..
     
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