Human height remained unchanged for 2k years in Milan, finds study | Hacker News Reader

Human height remained unchanged for 2k years in Milan, finds study

phys.org

74 pointspseudolus22 comments

Milan is a part of Italy that is known for not really having a lot of natural disasters, access to a lot of water, and is basically all flat ground. I wonder if this has something to do with that?

That's what they seem to hint at in the final sentence.

> "Suggesting to the study authors that city life in Milan has provided a stable environment for thousands of years"

This does throw a wrench in prevailing thought that improved childhood nutrition is leading to taller people. I would guess that, when it comes to changes in stature, environment/nutrition are more cataclysmic effectors while genetics vis-a-vis sexual preferences play a more sustained role in shaping it. i.e. in a stable environment you would expect change mostly to be effected by the cultural preference of taller/shorter people.

On cataclysmic effectors - one really interesting study I think back on often[1] is a serendipitous survey of island lizards hind-leg lengths before and after a major hurricane season. Basically, they found that over the course of one year, there was a 6% reduction in the populations leg lengths due to, they claim, the taller ones being unable to hold onto trees during the storms.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lizards-with-b...

Ehh you can't draw that conclusion. North and South Koreans have a 7 height difference of 6 inches. What's more likely happening here is that the Milanese diet has no changed since the Roman Era. Or has to changed very little in meaningful ways, i.e. more nutritious meals.

> the Milanese diet has no changed since the Roman Era. Or has to changed very little in meaningful ways, i.e. more nutritious meals.

Interesting to note that potatoes, tomatoes, and pasta were not present in their diet during Roman times.

True. But the average Korean was also around and often under 4 feet tall up until the 1950s. So yeah. Now depending where you are they average 6 feet. And well, they haven't been ethnically replaced. So unless the Koreans have a magic gene that has made them gain 2 feet in height. No, it's definitely their diet.

You have to provide a credible reference for a ridiculous claim like this. Cursory search says Korean’s average height has grown about 6 inches in a century. Two feet or 50% taller might as be a new subspecies.

Here's an article from a credible source on Korean height. https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/2/23/23611947/world-south-ko...

From that article:

> For example, the average South Korean woman was about 4-foot-7 ...

That's closer to 5 feet than 4 feet. And 4 foot 7 is kind of hard pressed to be "around 4 feet", which most people would read as "around 4 foot 0".

Maybe Korea's issue (as well as other East Asian countries) issue with a rice-based diet (especially white rice) in the absence of modern levels of consumption of meat or other animal-derived food. While bread (especially whole bread) has some level of protein in and of itself, and Italians have also had cheese and milk available at least some of the time, trying to survive off of a diet of rice and vegetables must be particularly unsuited to growing to your genetic potential. My impression of Korean food is that it would be quite unsatisfying from a nutritional standpoint without the meat, whereas Indian and even Chinese food seem to be a little more nutritious.

> without the meat, whereas Indian and even Chinese food seem to be a little more nutritious.

> even

Interesting word to describe the cuisine with arguably the richest history of vegetarian dishes/diet.

Hmm, I would consider Indian to have the richer history of vegetarian dishes, hence why I used "even Chinese". Moreover, Indian cuisine uses cheese and butter, unlike Chinese cuisine

Those products are more southern Italian cusine. Northern is typified by cheese, butter, lard, and corn/rice.

> This does throw a wrench in prevailing thought that improved childhood nutrition is leading to taller people.

It absolutely can lead to taller people if the genetic height potential had been suppressed by poor childhood nutrition. You see this in stark form in developing countries where heights are rising rapidly (sometimes nearly a foot in one generation in individual cases). It's not only nutrition - it's access to more modern medicine, including vaccines and treatments, and improved sanitation that prevent childhood diseases that stunted people in the past.

If a population is already on average at its maximum genetic height potential, however, improved nutrition and healthcare isn't going to change height much.

Anecdotally, in the Milan area in every single generation of people I know, the males are taller than both parents and the females are often taller than their mother.

How much taller? People do shrink in height a few centimeters starting at age 40.

10 cm or more. That's 4 inches. That started with boomers many years ago.

In stark contrast to Milan. Koreans were steadily around 5'3"/4'10" in the Joseon era, 15th to 19th century, then grew 6 inches in the past century. Improved childhood nutrition might not lead to a taller population, but poor childhood nutrition definitely leads to shorter adult height.

https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20120131000667

It's also been one of the wealthiest parts of the world since Roman times.

Tangentially related. Here is an interesting inscription on the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo.

> Janus, primus Rex Italiae de progenie gigantum, qui fundavit Genuam temporae Abrahae

Translated:

> Janus, the first ruler of Italy, of the progeny of the giants, who founded Genoa in the days of Abraham

from wikipedia, I learned

The city's modern name may derive from the Latin word meaning "knee", but there are other theories. It could derive from the god Janus, because Genoa, like him, has two faces: a face that looks at the sea and another turned to the mountains. Or it could come from the Latin word ianua, also related to the name of the God Janus, and meaning "door", or "passage." Besides that, it may refer to its geographical position at the centre of the Ligurian coastal arch. The Latin name, oppidum Genua, is recorded by Pliny the Elder as part of the Augustean Regio IX Liguria.

I’m a male from Milan and I’m 178 cm tall. I like the bit about it supposedly providing a stable environment for millennia: I often find myself in pretty ancient churches or monasteries eyeing eroded depressions in stone stairs and flagstones, boggling by how many people must’ve walked upon a given spot in order to cause the kind of weathering I’m seeing. So many people, so many lives, so many different lifestyles and eras, but we’re all so essentially human.

Just curious, do these studies ever control for age? I know there were issues with life expectancy studies when looked at through the ages not taking into account the high rates of infanticide. Could the same issue be here with younger and older generations being shorter.

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