THE HEIGHT OF THE POPULATION OF OLD RUS HALYCH

Abstract

The information about the length of the bones of the population of Old Rus Halych is introduced into the scientific circulation, the average height of the city’s population is reconstructed, and its position among chronologically close groups of the territory of Ukraine is determined in the paper. The material comes from excavations of the burial ground of the 11th—13th centuries in the Tsarinka tract, where in Old Rus times the trading and craft suburb of Halych was existed. Measurements of 45 male and 21 female skeletons were used in the work.
 The people buried in the cemetery had a small height, which fits well into the range of intergroup variations of the series from the territory of Ukraine during the Old Rus period. Men and women are tall (174 cm and 160.4 cm). The difference in average height between men and women in this series is higher than the standard norm. This may be because they were genetically related to different populations. The fact that the male and female parts of the population of Halych were formed on a slightly different basis, we can say from the materials of craniology. A fairly wealthy population was buried in the cemetery, so it is difficult to connect the difference in height with nutritional problems.
 The height of the men of Halych buried in Tsarinka has the closest analogies in the cemeteries of the cities of Kyiv and Pereyaslav. The height of the male population of Halych is bigger than the height of the people of the Old Rus Age from the rural burial grounds of both the western lands of Ukraine and the Middle Dnieper region. Female samples do not demonstrate this so clearly.
 The difference in height between the population of cities and villages of Kyivan Rus is fixed. In a number of cases, it can be said that the composition of the population of cities was intensively replenished by immigrants from other territories, which are characterized by higher height. Perhaps, in addition, there was a certain selection of newcomers to the city, taking into account professional requests. The most physically developed people from those populations, which were generally characterized by a massive body structure, were selected for the prince’s guard as well as for a number of craft professions. In the future, these features could be fixed by marriage contacts in their milieu. Perhaps the better nutrition of city dwellers, especially wealthy ones, also played a role.