Why Are People The Height That They Are?

[sandyRoe]

Most are between 5' and 6'. Why are we not giants of 12' +, or smaller, say average about 3'?

[boxtops]

Perhaps we will be 12ft in time - Shakespeare's crowd were all under 5 ft tall. We get taller as we evolve, apparently.

[Baldric]

So they fit into their genes sandy!

[sandyRoe]

You may well be right, Boxtops. I think Lucy, one of our distant ancestors, was only about 3' tall.

[albaqwerty]

As there are people of small stature, and being between 5 and 6 ft is considered normal, but also, there are people who are 7ft plus.
So if the norm was 12ft, then those of use between 5 and 6ft would be of short stature.

Interesting question :-)

[albaqwerty]

those of use!, really, * those of us

[woofgang]

IIRC, average human height at the present time is limited by the ability of the heart to pump and the bones and muscles to support the body

[starone]

Well my mother was short and so were the rest of her family so it stands to reason I haven't got a hope of being tall (I'm 5 ft.) One of my aunts came up to my shoulder. However, my grandsons are all tall and my youngest aged 17 is 6 ft 4 ins, so I expect future generations will get taller.

[albaqwerty]

good things come in little packages :-)

One of my aunt's was 5' with her hands in the air, my uncle (her husband) was 6' 2''

[LyndaB]

When I first grew to this height (5'7") in the late 60's, apart from one other girl, I was head and shoulders taller than everyone else. Now I'm the shortest in the family, daughter around 5'10" and son 6'4", and I consider myself to be of average height

[daffy654]

My youngest child (boy of 15) is 6ft tall, he doesn't get it from my side of the family or his dad's as we are all below average or average height. My son's predicted height at full maturity is 6ft 2in.

I blame evolution. :)

[jno]

it's the square-cube law, of course!

http://io9.com/5789332/in-search-of-the-worlds-tallest-human

[Mosaic]

We've only been in our present point as a species for a short length of time. So provided we can enjoy a future as long as that enjoyed by say sea-lilies or even dinosaurs, then there's every likelihood that our average sizes will change.
'sizes may go down as well as up' as an evolutionary mortgage adviser might say.....so overcrowding and competition for resources into the distant future would logically mean human populations react genetically by becoming pygmy.
This has been observed in animal populations - the last of the mammoths were pygmy mammoths (and I want one in the garden).
BTW smaller stature in say Shakespeare's time will be a combination of nurture and disease - given two generations of full nutrition and no horrible diseases we seem to max out at about 6-7 foot.

[grasscarp]

The house that I lived in as a child was built 400 years ago. We had to alter the floors by lowering them as the rooms were too low for comfort otherwise, so definitely we are getting taller.

[Mosaic]

i think we are better fed and less likely to be stunted by disease and famine - the grwoth potential appears not to have altered in recent historic times ie coupla thousand years.

[espookid]

I heard one of the factors is the mixture of the populus ,if you went to a welsh mining village a hundred years ago the height would be much less than today as the people have traveled and -mixed - and the height has increased a lot
I only mention the mining village as it was a closed community

[joko]

as woofgang mentioned, gravity means that if we get much bigger, our bones, heart, etc will suffer for it.

the cases of overly tall people in the world often suffer terribly with arthritis and other ailments, some struggle to walk and even stand... some become 'misshapen' because of it.

unless there is a change in gravity or in our bodily structures i dont think we can get much taller than we are really ...

people like peter jones etc who is 6ft 7" and if you didnt know that and had no basis for reference he just looks like an average sized man really, he appears to have no health problems due to his height - but then 6'7", although tall is not 'weirdly' tall.
but much more and i think hed start to suffer.

it seems like about 7ft is where the average man would have issues, i would think?


i once met a giant - i real life one!
well... a man with giantism and strangely though tall, he wasn't overly tall that he stood out -i think about 6ft 5 - but he had other symptoms and visible signs of it - massive hands and feet, a sort of chunkiness around the joints and his head was massive, as were his features, ears and forehead etc ... kind of like a cartoon version of a giant really.

[Eve]

Genes are a big factor though, you can definitely see it run through the female side of my mum's family, short and curvy (like many of us look facially familiar too). My mum and I are very similar, there is a photo people think is me to look at but I'm only a few years old sat on her lap :) One of my cousins and I are very similar too and, it's said now she is a bit older, another cousin's daughter.

Similarly, my Dad and brother are the same kind of build, tall and slim but not skinny build.

[Eve]

I shared a "moment" with a lovely guy who was 6'7 - I had to sit on sea front railings to kiss him (it made things a lot easier haha, I'm only 5'3). He drove a Metro which always used to amuse me.

[BlueToffee]

The first 18 years of my life I went from almost nothing to 186cm, now 50 years later I'm on the way down, currently at 182cm :(

[ummmm]

My paternal side of the family are short. All the women are under 5ft and quite fat.

The maternal side are tall and slim.