Were They All Shorter Back Then?
by Carolyn Freeman Travers, Research Manager
http://www.plimoth.org/learn/history/myth/fourfttwomyth.asp
"And as you can see from the clothes, they were all much shorter in those days,
and they were old at thirty-nine, and dead at forty." - tour guide at the Museum of
Costume, Bath, 1984
There are several common pieces of misinformation/mistaken beliefs about
people in the past: that they were all "much shorter in those days", that they died
at a much earlier age (and therefore reached old age much earlier as well),
married at a very early age, had very large families, and the leading cause of
death for women was childbirth. The myth that people were shorter in the 17th
century is adressed below. For information about the myth that people died
young, go to our Dead at Forty page.
A Note on Terms: The term "average" can mean one of three types. Adding up
all of the figures being considered and dividing them by the number there are
arrives at the mean. The median is the mid-point; half of the topic in question
would be above this figure, and half below. The mode is the most frequently met
with figure in the series.
Average Heights
The average height for an early 17th-century English man was approximately 5’
6". For 17th-century English women, it was about 5’ ½". While average heights in
England remained virtually unchanged in the 17th and 18th centuries, American
colonists grew taller. Averages for modern Americans are just over 5’ 9" for men,
and about 5’ 3 ¾" for women. The main reasons for this difference are improved
nutrition, notably increased consumption of meat and milk, and antibiotics.
Modern Americans are measured, or give their height, for many documents;
people in the early 17th century did not. The one exception was the military
musters, where the height of a man determined what weapon he was fit to use.
The "Men and Armour for Gloucestershire in 1608, " for example, divided the
men both by age groups and height. The four catagories were "tallest stature fitt
to make a pykeman," "middle stature fitt to make a musketyer," "lower stature fitt
to serve with a Calyver" and "meanest stature either fit for a pyoner [foot soldier,
laborer], or of little other use."1 This division, while interesting, is hardly precise.
Descriptions of runaway slaves later in the period often included height, but the
figures given may have been approximates. Lacking documentary evidence, the
best source of evidence is the people themselves, at least their remains.
Evidence compiled from various archaeological excavations in medieval
England, 17th-century London, and colonial America provides some figures,
which indicate at least the probable average height for early 17th-century English
men and women.
Medieval England
Excavations of cemeteries dating back to medieval England have provided a
range of heights for both men and women and a mean average for both. Across
the sites, the mean average height for males was 171.26 cm. [66.79 inches or 5’
6 ¾"]. For females, it was 157.55 cm. [61.44 inches or 5’ 1 ½"]. 2
Seventeenth-Century London
From bones examined from Farringdon Street in London as well as another study
of 17th-18th century femora (thigh bones), the average height of people nearer in
time and place to the early Plymouth colonists can be determined. The averages
from Farringdon Street are 169.3 cm [66.02 inches or 5’ 6"] for males and 155.2
cm [60.52 inches or 5’ ½"] for females.The wider-ranging 17th & 18th centuries
study gives 169 cm [65.91 inches or just under 5’ 6"] for men and 155 cm [60.45
inches or just under 5’ ½"] for women. While it is evident that the height of
Londoners changed very little in the 17th and 18th centuries, the same was not
true of Americans.
American Colonists
A compilation of evidence from excavations of graves dating to the American
colonial period gives averages of 173.2 [67.54 inches or 5’ 7 ½"] for males and
159.8 cm [62.32 inches or slightly over 5’ 2 ¼"].3
"By the time of the American Revolution, native-born whites appear to have
achieved nearly modern final heights. The analysis of a sample of recruits from
the Revolutionary Army (1775-1783) indicates that the final height of native-born
white males between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-five averaged 68.1
inches.The figure is not only one to four inches greater that the final height of
European males reported for several nations during the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, but is also virtually identical with final heights in the
Union Army during the Civil War and in the U.S. Army during World War II." 4
Modern World
A study published in Britain in 1988, using data compiled from 1981, determined
that the average height in the modern British population was 173.8 cm. [67.78
inches or 5’ 7 ¾"] for males and 160.9 cm. [62.75 inches or 5’ 2 ¾"] for females.
For modern white Americans, the average stature for males is 69.1", or just over
5’ 9", and for women, 63.7", or about 5’ 3 ¾". 5
Why the Difference?
There are two basic theories as to why modern people are taller. The first is that
this is the result of "crossbreeding" between different gene pools, creating a
larger hybrid. The second, and much more popular, is that improved nutrition,
combined with other facets of modern life such as antibiotics and central heating,
have allowed people to reach their maximum height potential.
The "hybrid" theory explains the increase in body size as a result of "improved
transportation, easier travel and the breaking-up of genetic isolates" and the
resultant decrease in inbreeding. This argument would make the increasingly
out-bred population of the United States a nation of Big Boys and Early Girls. It
has supporters, but is generally the less compelling explanation. Arguments
against it include the lack of much initial inbreeding in most Western populations,
the lack of evidence that cross-racial progeny are larger and the trend’s reversal
during wartime. 6
The improved nutrition theory actually involves two components. The first is the
increase in available calories, and the second, a decrease in energy lost or
expended. As Stanley Garn wrote:
"Nutritional explanations begin with the increased availability of food at a lower
cost that followed the repeal of the corn laws in Britain, the increased availability
of safe cow milk that began in the last century and the decreased incidence of
diarrhea and more serious infections. Food has become cheaper, measured by
kilocalories earned per hour of labor, nutrient densities have improved and
vitamin-deficiency diseases, once common, have now become rare in the west.
Birth weights are more often quadrupled by the end of the first year.
Moreover, the secular increase in body size and decrease in the age at
menarche have paralleled improvements in the water supply and in the disposal
of human wastes, the reduction in the incidence of childhood diseases and –
more recently – the introduction of antibiotics. Where the pipe has replaced ditch
water, where the latrine has replaced the outdoor squat and where childhood
diseases have been reduced by immunization, size and growth rates have
responded in turn.
It is impressive to compare child growth in places where there is still one episode
of diarrhea per week (effectively losing one-seventh of the calories ingested) with
child growth in places where diarrheas are rare. It is also impressive to see how
child growth has responded to supplementation and to national attempts to
improve the nutritional quality of breadstuff and noodles, for example.
Moreover, the secular trend has gone along with decreased energy expenditure,
ranging from the abolition of child labor to the use of school buses to warmer
winter temperatures in the home. In 1900 preteens were still working in coal
mines in Britain; child labor still manned textile mills in the United States as late
as 1920. Even apart from higher nutrient densities, the greater use of meat and
milk and the reduction in the number and severity of childhood illnesses, limiting
calories out leaves more energy for growth and development. For a 10-year-old,
not working in a factory, not walking miles to and from school and not living in a
frigid home in winter together free hundreds of kilocalories or kilojoules per day
for the serious business of growing and growing larger. 8
Modern studies of twins have shown that a person’s height is controlled 90% by
heredity and 10% by environmental causes. 9 While at first glance this seems a
minor difference, it means that a person who would have been 5’ 7" under
optimal conditions, in an extremely adverse situation might stop growing at 5’ 1".
For people of the "middling sort," such as those who became Plymouth colonists,
fluctuations in food supply and generally hard labor would have acted to limit
potential growth.
NOTES:
1.
J. Smith, Men and Armour in Gloucestershire in 1608 (Gloucester, 1980), p.1.
Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England 1066-1550,
(London: Routledge, 1997), p.134.
2.
Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England 1066-1550,
(London: Routledge, 1997), p.134.
3.
J. Lawrence Angel, "Colonial to Modern Skeletal Change in the U. S. A.,"
American Journal of Physical Anthropology 45, no.3 (November, 1976): 725.
4.
R. W. Fogel et al, "Secular Changes in American & British Stature and
Nutrition," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14, no.2(Autumn, 1983): 462-3.
5.
William J. White, "Skeletal Remains …." (1988) cited in Daniell, Christopher,
Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066-1550 (London: Routledge, 1997),
p.135.
6.
Vital and Health Statistics Series 11, No.238, "Anthropometric Reference
Data and Prevalence of Overweight, United States 1976-80." Quoted on National
Center for Health Statistics Website, 1998.
7.
Stanley M. Garn, "The Secular Trend in Size and Maturational Timing and Its
Implications for Nutritional Assessment," Journal of Nutrition 117 (1987): 819-20.
8.
Ibid, p.820.
9.
Daniell, Death and Burial, p.135.