03-27-2010, 10:37 PM
Quote:Also, Matt Amt has said a number of times that the average height was something like 5'5", I think from Roman military burials?
There is also an Italian archaeologist claiming to have measured all Roman skeletal remains in Europe, and puts the average height at 5'2". If you can find his name let me know.
Quote:3.- Some sources tell us about the roman soldiers with 1.70m. but archaeology show us another thing,just look on a museum an roman "Panoplia" are very thiny in comparation with modern standars
These debates often end up involving only references to literary texts, scattered references to archaeology, and personal opinions. Here are some hard facts, taken from Geoffrey Kron, "Anthropometry, Physical Anthropology, and the Reconstruction of Ancient Health, Nutrition, and Living Standards," in Historia 54/1 (2005):
Kron found the mean height of 927 Italian adult males from 500 BC to 500 AD to be 168.3 cm, with no significant trends in height based on region or date. Some isolated findings:
146 individuals from Pontecagnano (4th-3rd c. BC), mean height 169.1 cm
49 individuals from Herculaneum (various periods), mean height 169.1 cm
67 individuals from Civitanova (various periods), mean height 169 cm
60 individuals from Monte Casaia (various periods), mean height 167.8 cm
However, as he notes, these heights very likely underestimate the heights of young males of military age because they include many older males as well, and height can diminish as much as 3 cm during an individual's lifetime.
Lawrence Angel has also studied heights of individuals from Greek burials on a much smaller scale, and he found that based on a study of 58 individuals from Classical Greece, the mean height for males during this time was 170.5 cm. Based on a study of 28 individuals from Hellenistic Greece, the mean height was 171.9 cm. Further anthropometric studies of individuals buried in Corinth and the Athenian Kerameikos corroborate these findings.
Kron emphasizes that most of these mean heights were not reached again until the mid-19th century by many European nations, and not until the mid 20th century (!) by Italy and Greece.
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
