In fact, it is not: an important reason is that the demand for food, clothing, housing and transportation determines the height of human beings.
Food structure determines height.
This novel describes some heroes who are nine or two feet tall. Removing the differences in weights and measures at that time is the majestic exaggeration of literary works. But modern people are definitely taller than ancient people.
I firmly believe that a new logic is: since ancient times, we have been eating better and better, and we will grow taller and taller. And the map of human evolution that we have seen since childhood also proves this.
From the perspective of human history, it is true.
About 3.4 million years ago, people who ate leaves began to eat meat. By 6.5438+0.9 million years ago, their bodies suddenly changed and they began to grow taller, making them more suitable for long-distance running.
African "homo habilis" represents early human ancestors who lived about 2 million years ago. Judging from the bone fossils found, they are generally less than four feet tall. In the ape-man cave in Zhoukoudian, Beijing, human skeleton fossils dating from about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago were found, and the height was less than five feet. By the end of the ice age, that is, 10 thousand years ago, the height of human beings was actually similar to that of modern people.
Bones found in Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunter-gatherers at the end of the Ice Age was 5 feet 9 inches (about 175cm) for males and 5 feet 5 inches (about 165cm) for females.
But what happened next was that humans gave up hunting and gathering, turned to agriculture and began farming.
But according to anthropologist jared? Diamond said in Applied Anthropology that with the progress of technology, the quality of human life will not necessarily improve.
Before you hunt and gather, the food you get is broad spectrum. Once transformed into an agricultural society, early farmers can only get heat from one or several starch-rich crops. The calories needed for survival are different from the nutrients needed for growth. After the prevalence of "carnivores", most people can only exchange cheap energy at the expense of malnutrition, and consume unnecessary nutrients such as growing muscles and bones.
Three high-carbohydrate plants, wheat, rice and corn, each contain relatively low levels of vitamins or amino acids. In a word, it is impossible to eat only staple food.
The price is not high.
With the development of agriculture, the height began to decline. By 3000 BC, it had dropped to a low point of only 5 feet 3.3 inches (about 160cm) for men and 5 feet (about 152cm) for women.
Southern Europeans have degenerated into the captain's era.
Relying on a limited number of crops, farmers will starve collectively if they don't plant them. Agriculture encourages living in a compact community, and contact in a densely populated society can easily lead to the spread of parasites and infectious diseases. After the rise of agriculture, tuberculosis, dysentery, measles and plague all raged.
It was not until the classical times (the middle of 5th-4th century BC) that the heights of Greeks and Turks began to falter.
By the way, the prehistoric human data in the Yellow River basin can also be slightly corroborated:
In Peiligang era (7000 BC), the average height of male cemeteries was 169.438+0 cm.
In Yangshao era (4800 BC), the average height of men was 167.79cm.
The average height of men in Dawenkou culture (4300 BC) was 170.66cm.
The average height of men in Longshan period (2500 BC) was 165.75 cm.
Of course, the statistics here are still very limited.
Incidentally, the Report on Nutrition and Chronic Diseases of China Residents released by the State Council Information Office on June 30th, 20 15 shows that the average height of adult males aged 20 167.438+0 cm China 18 and above.
According to Professor Richard, people's height reached its maximum in the early Middle Ages because the average temperature of the earth was 2 to 3 degrees higher than before or after. In this way, the agricultural harvest is good, the cultivated land is increased, and more poultry and livestock can be raised. The decrease of population density also reduces the probability of disease transmission. These conditions are virtuous, and the height goes up.
A negative example is China. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the population of China increased on a large scale, and the proportion of meat in the diet decreased greatly. According to scholars' estimation, farmers in the south of the Yangtze River in Ming and Qing Dynasties can only eat a small amount of meat for about 20 days a year. Even the nobles and the rich eat much less meat than Europeans-the meat consumption of Europeans reached an alarming figure in the late Middle Ages, and the daily meat consumption of Berlin citizens in Germany was about 3 pounds.
Therefore, during this period, the height growth of China people stagnated, and even experienced a general retrogression. In Europe, with the advent of the industrial age, a large number of workers were forced to accept low-nutrient food to survive, which brought about a decrease in average height.
100, the growth rate began to go against the sky.
In 20 13, a new paper in Oxford Economic Literature shows that from the middle of 19 century to the 1980s, the average height of European men increased by an unprecedented 1 1 cm.
It's the height.
Specifically, it increased from 167cm to 178cm. In the East, the average height of Japanese people has almost completed the counterattack of half a century 10 cm.
Therefore, eating habits and nutrition determine height.