First DarkFri, Oct 17, 2008 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.
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):
That's about as much as I can offer on this subject, but at least now you've got one response!