Two millennia of male stature development and population health and wealth in the Low Countries

Abstract

This paper offers a review of shifts in average male stature and their relationship with health and wealth in the Low Countries from AD 50 to 1997. Twenty-one population samples were studied to cover the full time span. To make data compatible, so-called ‘virtual statures’ were used, i.e. the statures which adult males were supposed to have had at the end of their growth period, before they started shrinking by ageing. Original data were extracted from ‘in situ measured statures’, ‘calculated statures’ and ‘corrected cadaveric statures’. If possible, maximum femoral lengths were also collected from the same population samples to check whether trends in stature development were in agreement with raw skeletal data. A long phase of stature decrease from ca. 176 cm to 166 cm, a so-called ‘negative secular trend’, was noticed from the Roman Period up to and including the first half of the 19th century. This was followed by a sharp and still ongoing increase in stature to 184 cm, a typical ‘positive secular trend’, from the second half of the 19th century to the present time. General shifts in stature and ‘outliers’ illustrative for the process are viewed in the context of socio-economic, demographic, health and nutritional factors. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.