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Europeans stand tall as Americans downsize By Kate Connolly in Munich April 17, 2004
The New World has lost its superiority over the Old - at least in terms of physical stature - and John Komlos has the evidence. His records, including files on runaway slaves, indentured servants and West Point graduates, bear testament to the US decline.
Professor Komlos's research over more than 20 years has documented the heights of almost a quarter of a million people from the 1700s to the present. The findings provide the most accurate gauge with which to measure the development of the human physique, he said.
"Americans have stopped growing while Europeans are increasing in height at quite a pace," said Professor Komlos, a leading anthropometric historian who studies such development.
The heights of soldiers who fought in the Crimean War, of American slaves, of present-day Norwegians and the poor of 18th-century London are among data he has gleaned from libraries, military academies and passport offices, and assiduously plotted on to detailed graphs.
He has discovered, for instance, that American men were nearly eight centimetres taller than the Dutch in the 1800s. Now the tables have turned, and the Dutch - the tallest people in Europe, with an average height of around 1.85 metres - stand eight centimetres above Americans.
While the average American man was 1.75 metres, five centimetres taller than the average Briton during the American War of Independence in 1775, nowadays the American is about a centimetre shorter than the Briton. The slide, Professor Komlos said, dates to the mid-20th century, and the reasons are probably socio-economic.
"From being the tallest in the world for 200 years with the highest per capita income, this suddenly stopped," he said. "By the 1950s, the welfare state was already well-established in many European countries."
Over the same period, the rich-poor divide in the US has been widening. Infant mortality is twice as high as in Scandinavia, while an increasing reliance on fast food in the US means that even the better-off are tending to expand outwards rather than upwards. ...
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/16/1082055655965.html>
Carl
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