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posted by martyb on Friday April 10 2015, @08:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the looking-up dept.

If you've ever wondered why Dutch people are so tall, this story from The New York Times may have the answer:

Today, the Dutch are on average the tallest people on the planet. Just 150 years ago, they were relatively short. In 1860, the average Dutch soldier in the Netherlands was just 5 feet 5 inches. American men were 2.7 inches taller.

Since 1860, average heights have increased in many parts of the world, but no people have shot up like the Dutch. The average Dutchman now stands over six feet tall. And while the growth spurt in the United States has stopped in recent years, the Dutch continue to get taller.

For years, scientists have sought to understand why average height has increased, and why the Dutch in particular have grown so quickly. Among other factors, the Dutch have a better diet than in the past, and they also have better medical care. But now Dr. Stulp and his colleagues have found evidence suggesting that evolution itself is also helping to make them taller.

It seems that taller men in the Netherlands are more likely to father more children:

Dr. Stulp and his colleagues analyzed data on 42,612 men and women over age 45, looking at the height of their subjects and how many children they had. Dutch men who were taller than average had more children than those of average or lower than average height, the researchers found.

 
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  • (Score: 1) by bart on Saturday April 11 2015, @02:55PM

    by bart (2844) on Saturday April 11 2015, @02:55PM (#168958)

    Hi all

    I currently commute between Amsterdam and Avenhorn in the Netherlands. This is a commute between multi-cultural Amsterdam, and real old Holland. The difference in average height of the young people is remarkable. In Avenhorn I'd say the average young male is about 1.90m and the average young woman 1.80. Over there, I don't stand out at all.
    In Amsterdam, where at least half the young population is not ethnic Dutch, they are much smaller on average.

    Curiously, at the place I work, even the adults are likely to drink 2 glasses of milk at breakfast and lunch. To me the correlation is very obvious, and has a lot to do with drinking huge amounts of milk.

    Funny enough, my mother is from this tall region, and two of her brothers are also 2 meters high, and they were born in the late 1930s, when that was still very rare. My height, for someone from 1963 is also rare, but right now, in North Holland, 2 meter is not rare at all.