Genetic Variation (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 02:40 (5317 days ago) @ David Turell


> > B-M: They were not un-evolved versions of us. They were bigger, faster, stronger, and I suspect smarter, than we are. 
> > 
> > The evidence surely is that humans in the past were smaller than we are today. That is the general trend. You only have to compare the heights of doorways in everyday dwellings. Faster and stronger and more alert as a general average, quite probably, since they lived in more dangerous environments. 
> 
> 
> English and American histiorical buildings and clothing show that the 18th and 19th century people were short. However, before the agricultural revolution, several thousand years ago, the average population was taller, with men approaching six feet. I know of no theory that explains this reduction in height with the hard work of agriculture. Dietary change? Increased caloric burn?-What about this: When we moved from nomadic hunting societies to more pastoralized cultures where we could more easily defend ourselves in clusters it decreased the need for height; there is a ratio that for every foot tall you are you can see one mile. Access to walls decreased the need to be taller?-Maybe we ate meat more regularly than is thought before pastorlization? Mammoths could probably feed a small group for a couple months. If you add to the fact that when we go back to the ice age--we had natural refrigeration, we simply had a much more ready supply of meat? The one major difference for us now over the 19th and 18th centuries is how much meat we eat--even compared to 50 years ago. This sounds like a fairly natural explanation on why sizes of humans shrunk for a bit before curving back up over the last 100 years. -Or what if shorter just became more sexy for awhile?

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