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Goffredo · 06-12-2002, 04:09 PM

Yeah I like brunettes or women with very dary hair and clear eyes. That mix kills me ever since I fell head over heals for a dark hair beauty with green eyes and white skin that was in my third grade class. I think its called imprinting.

06-12-2002, 07:03 PM

Salve, 
 
The averages of the male and female skeletons at Herculaneum were 1.69 and 1.55 compared to modern averages in Naples of 1.64 and 1.52 (Dyson, page 183 with note referring to Bisel, S., 'The skeletons of Hercaluneum' in: B. Purdy(ed.), Wet site archaeology (1988) and De Caro, S., 'Scavi nell'area fuori la Porta di Nola a Pompei' in Cronache Pompeiane 5 (1979)). 
 
Regards, 
 
Sander van Dorst

Caius Fabius · 06-13-2002, 01:50 AM

Of course, if you take a population of males, and draft the "tall" ones and the "healthy" ones, and send them off to fight, not allowing them to marry, or sire offspring, while the short and unhealthy ones stay home and make loads of offspring, then you weed tall and healthy out of the gene pool. [Reverse Darwinism???] Fortunately there are recessive genes. 
 
I have never understood the modern military/social rules for only drafting the ones who pass a certain level of health and intelligence and leaving the rest to sire more children. If you follow that tactic for cattle, you get nice, happy stupid and fat cattle. (That's fine for cattle!) You don't have to be able to carry 80 pound for 20 miles to sit in and fight in a modern tank, (but if you are too fat you can't get in!) 
 
Maybe this explains the need for "welfare" states, and the collapse of civilizations? Rome became a welfare city, supporting loads of non-working non-productive people, with free food and entertainment. Was this because their best and brightest were not reproducing? 
 
There are at least two measures for the "Roman Foot", as mentioned in another thread. One is Pes Monetalis, the other is Pes Drusianus. There is evidence that both were used in overlapping time periods for measuring Roman constructions. It would be important to know which one is referenced before making absolute statements of recruiting standards, relating them to today's measures. 
 
p.M.=0.296 meter or 11.65 inches 
p.D.=0.332 meter or 13.1 inches 
 
"Just before class started, I looked in the big book where all the world's history is written, and it said...." Neil J. Hackett, PhD ancient history, professor OSU, 1987

06-13-2002, 02:34 AM

Interesting. 
 
I guess my perhaps wrong assumption was that History was progressive. Ie. humans start out in caves, then houses than highrises etc etc. I think the problem I really had was with the "knowledgable" tour guides who bascially suggested that everyone was shorter the further back in history we went. 
 
From my history classes I do remember that diet was a very important factor in how tall a person became....

TITVS SABATINVS AQVILIVS · 06-13-2002, 07:00 AM

I think that Caius Fabius has told right things. I can only add a "maybe" further hypothetical consideration: you know that the distance among vertebras, in the spinal column, increases 
when the weights are low, or when you are in bed about ten days for a flu, or you are many hours in water... Well, the Romans (more the civilians, less the legionaries, I guess), thanks to their thermae, passed a lot of their time sinked in the water. They were the only people in the history that did it regularly for centuries. Did that behaviour condition (not genetically, of course) the heights? 
 
The hard military duty of the legionary soldiers, surely got them gradually shorter (even if this could not have a genetic influence, anyway it could have some influence about the measures...) 
 
Ualete, 
 
Titus Sabatinus Aquilius

Gregg · 06-13-2002, 02:16 PM

Ah, Social Darwinism. Utter crap, of course, but it always makes for an amusing discussion... 
 
Modern societies tend to draft the young, healthy and (relatively) intelligent men because, in the event of war, they want to win. But there is no imaginable way this could effect the "genetic quality" of a society. Only a very small percentage of adult males in the Roman-controlled world (during the Empire, anyway) served in the legions and auxiliaries. Even the unprecedented slaughter of the First World War, during which a large percentage of adult males were mobilized, cost the combatants, in actual war deaths, only a small percentage of those who actually served. The vast majority of the 16 million men born in Germany in the twenty-nine years between 1870 and 1899 served during the war, but only 13 percent were killed. An atrocious slaughter, certainly, one of the worst in human history to that point, and enough to induce the German army (and German society in general) to decide they'd had enough and simply put down its guns and stop fighting. But not enough, in any way, to effect the "genetic quality" of their society. 
 
Nor is the value of "tall" and "healthy" recruits versus "short" and "unhealthy" ones necessarily clear-cut. During the American Civil War it was noted that recruits from the farming areas tended to be big, tall, healthy, strapping lads, while the recruits from the big urban centers, like New York, tended to be small, pale and sickly. However, a few months later most of the tall, healthy farm boys were dead from one disease or another, while the small and sickly New Yorkers were still trudging along. The explanation was that childhood diseases tended to establish themselves on an endemic basis in cities, so anyone who was born in a city could expect to be exposed to a myriad of diseases at a very young age, the majority of which would incur lifelong immunity to the survivors, though possibly with some debilitating effects (like being small and sickly looking). These same diseases often could not establish themselves in thinly populated rural areas, where one could grow to adulthood without exposure, consequently growing big and strong and (to all outward appearances anyway) healthy. But once you brought those "healthy" individuals out of their disease-free enclaves and exposed them to areas and populations with more disease experience, high mortality was inevitable. And since immunity is at least partially inherited, it would be (by the logic of Social Darwinism) in a societies best interest to let the "tall," "healthy" ones die, and the "short," "unhealthy" ones live and propagate. 
 
Nor do societies deny their soldiers the right to marry and procreate. Roman soldiers could sire as many children as they wanted to. If they lived long enough to retire, their children (and marriages) would be recognized as legitimate by the state. Few governments would be so foolish as to deny its armed forces such basic rights. Not if they wished to remain in power, anyway. 
 
Diet and disease had a much greater effect on survival throughout human history, and were usually completely out of any societies conscious control. 
 
Rome's "welfare state" had more to do with the severe economic disparity between the ultra-wealthy and the vast majority. Keeping the masses fed and entertained helped keep them from getting any ideas, like maybe Rome would be a better place if there were a few less fat bastards eating all the pie. 
 
Gregg

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