In the past, height was usually greater in places with low population density, lots of wild animals to hunt for and lots of fish.
Height depends greatly on diet composition / nutrition. That's why people are becoming taller with each generation in most countries nowadays.
In Poland nowadays average height is 178,5 cm for men.
But in 2004 it was 177,5 and in 1968 it was 170,5. And in 1880 it was 165,0. So during 130 years it increased by 13 cm.
My father, for example, is much shorter than me (he is ca. 176,0 cm IIRC - when he was born it was way above average, now it is below).
Masada said:
I don't think height has much to do with physical activity. It's largely the product of diet.
Yes. And that's why hunters were taller than farmers - because hunters eat more meat. So you are both right, Flying Pig and Masada.
We're talking about two sedentary agrarian societies though. So I'm not sure how that observation is relevant?
Ancient Germania was a low population density society who lived in a region where 90% of land was covered by forests.
They were farmers, but at the same time they had a lot of wild animals around them to hunt for. They also had no cities, only villages.
And in general they had more food per inhabitant, because their population density was very low. Especially more meat and fish per inhabitant.
In Rome there were problems with food supplies, especially for poor people. Remember the slogan "Give us gladiator fights and bread", etc. ???
I don't see how that would apply any different to Italian farmers though?
In Italy during Roman Imperial times there were not many free farmers (free farmers were the dominant group during the Early Republic, but not later).
In Imperial times there were large latifundia owned by agrarian magnates, and poor laborers who worked there on salary, but did not own the land.
There was also a huge influx of people from villages to cities since the Late-Republic period until the Mid-Empire period.
Rome alone had a huge number of poor people, who lived from "social help" provided by the state ("Bread and gladiator fights").
Only since the crisis of the 3rd century AD, cities started to become depopulated again and people started to migrate to villages.
This - combined with the huge decline of population that followed - contributed to improvement of diet of an average person.
However, Late Imperial Rome produced the agrarian law known as
colonatus - it was similar to feudalism. Peasants (colons) worked for landowners. So despite the decline of cities, ownership of land did not return to common people - like during the Early Republic - but land continued to be owned by a handful of Roman magnates. Anyway, the average diet of an average person still improved compared to the overcrowded period of the 1st to 2nd centuries CE.
