Were the Germans physically superior?

[Sean Manning]

Siggi,

Wait a minute!! hock:

Whatever happened to the "sterotype German" who was only "large" because Tacitus and Polybius wanted all the Romans to believe that "savages" were big ungainly barbarians who needed to be whittled down to civilized size. Supposedly, as mentioned by someone, the further away from Rome these savages lived the bigger they legendarily got, which would make the One-Eyed Men virtual giants. :wink:

Now we are faced with archaeological statements like "larger-than-average height" and "tall!" Even the Goths, who supposedly weren't Germanic at all.

I maintain that Germans were actually midgets who projected themselves through elongated mirrors that only gave the appearance that they were tall, whilst other Germans obviously ran into battle wearing stilts. You can fool some of the Romans some of the time, but you can't fool all the Romans all of the time.

Hi Alanus,

In your eagerness to make a joke I can't tell where those phrases like "larger-than-average height" and "tall" come from. From Siggi's figures, it looks like Germans may have been around 5 cm taller than average Greeks or Italians. Its good to have trustworthy evidence for that, and its a much smaller difference than some of the suggestions different people were throwing around!

I'll have to follow up some of those English-language sources Siggi quotes.