Natural Selection May Help Account for Dutch Height Advantage(mobile.nytimes.com) |
Natural Selection May Help Account for Dutch Height Advantage(mobile.nytimes.com) |
It seems likely that eastern Europeans suffered much more extreme privations than the Dutch did in this time period, but maybe they also saw a similar effect, it's just less noticeable because those populations were a couple of inches shorter on average anyway. The notable thing about the Dutch is not that recent generations are taller than their forebears -- that's probably true for most all European populations. The really notable thing is that they're also taller than other northwestern populations like the Danes.
The natural selection argument is probably a better and certainly a simpler explanation, though.
"In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people of European descent in North America were far taller than those in Europe and were the tallest in the world. [...] In the late nineteenth century, the Netherlands was a land renowned for its short population" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#History_of_huma...)
150-ish years, 6-7 generations.
The other issue is that sometimes the exlusion statement is phrased in a nasty or blunt way that wouldn't be socially acceptable at all if it were a man talking about a factor of female attractiveness. I am sure there are males out there who make nasty and blunt comments in their profiles, but I am also sure there are fewer of them and they get ruled out for saying such things even by women to whom the statement doesn't apply.
Finally it's even worse that on many sites the statement ruling men under X height out comes at the end of the profile! So you might see how much you have in common with someone and start thinking about a cool date to go on and then get to the end of the profile to find out you never had a chance to begin with.
I would suspect this factor plays a part, but is almost certainly behind better nutrition, in the general increases in heights across the board through the baby boom and sexual revolution in Western countries. But you'd need to explain why it was particularly strong in the Netherlands for it to explain their above average height increases.
> Dr. Govindaraju said it was too early to speculate on why some populations are evolving in different ways.
Wtf?
The comment with a reference to the famine in 1944 got my attention though. Can it be that the famine, as an extreme condition, quickly followed by a lot of prosperity (in contrast to Eastern European), caused this remarkable quality?
I once read a book saying that children whose mother didn't eat enough during pregnancy had the tendency to eat way more than children whose mother ate enough. Starting with scarcity of nutrition leads to buffering way too much later on.
- Added FYI: My parents were born in 1949 and 1950. Their parents experienced the famine. Last but not least, I tend to be attracted to the taller women overhere.
http://www.road-care.co.uk/images/bollard1.jpg
They're all over Amsterdam. Strong selection pressure establishing a minimum height for men wanting to father children there.
Anecdotally, most of the men in my generation are nearly 6' or taller. I have heard the same said of men from several similar small, Dutch-immigrant communities, and those in surrounding towns and counties often remark about how tall the Dutch descendants in the community are (for example, in the context of high school sports). The women are taller, as well, than those in surrounding, mostly German-immigrant, communities.
I have paid a small amount of attention to studies like these. Because of the demographics of my community I've been somewhat skeptical of some of the suggested explanations. Particularly the diet reasoning struck me as odd since despite how closely the community identifies with the Netherlands, it is very much culturally American, with the attendant American diet.
I suspect that genetics really are a big part of the reason that Dutch people grow as tall as they do. The selection reasoning, though, makes some sense as well, though I don't know enough about bloodlines in my community (or the statistical height comparison to current Dutch people) to make much comment about it.
Also, Dutch people are not the only ones to get taller and taller: even in southern European countries the young generations are experiencing a huge height boost.
In the 1990s, in the midst of the mad cow disease crisis, the European Union banned the import of meat that contained artificial beef hormones. […] Until 1980, the use of growth hormones, both endogenous and exogenous, was completely prohibited in (as noted above) Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Greece.
Edit: Turns out the Dutch are the third biggest consumers of milk per capita in the world[0], looking at the list of "tallest" countries on wikipedia[1], there seems to be a great deal of overlap at the top of the two lists. I wonder if a secondary factor could also be related to vitamin D exposure, but I couldn't find a data source for that.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_cons...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Average_height_around...
> They do not live much on corn, but subsist for the most part on milk and flesh, and are much [engaged] in hunting; which circumstance must, by the nature of their food, and by their daily exercise and the freedom of their life (for having from boyhood been accustomed to no employment, or discipline, they do nothing at all contrary to their inclination), both promote their strength and render them men of vast stature of body.
Given a group of populations of various size, small populations tend to fill the outlier positions. You see this with schools - almost all of the top ranking schools are tiny. As are the bottom. They all pretty much return to the mean over time.
Now we see why the state had to subjugate them! b^)
