Average Male Height in Europe

[Grace O'Malley]

Finally a proper study on height. It is the most detailed study on height that has been done. The conclusion is that male height is determined by genetics and nutrition. The authors found a high correlation with Y M-170 and the males with the highest stature.

The tallest nation in Europe & the world is the Dutch (average male height 183.8 cm), followed by Montenegrins (183.2 cm) and possibly Bosnians (182.5 cm). The shortest men in Europe can be found in Turkey (173.6 cm), Portugal (173.9 cm), Cyprus (174.6 cm) and in economically underdeveloped nations of the Balkans and former Soviet Union (mainly Albania, Moldova, and the Caucasian republics.



http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...70677X14000665

[Methmatician]

Looks about right. I felt a little short when visiting Montenegro. Not so much in Bosnia but.

EDIT:

"If we also took single regions into account, the differences within Europe would be even greater. The first place on the continent would belong to Herzegovinian highlanders (185.2 cm) and the second one to Dalmatian Croats (183.8 cm)."

Hmmm... looks like highlanders win again.

[Foxy]

The tragedy of being a tall woman in Italy. Not that differences are so big (1-2 cm).

[Methmatician]

The tragedy of being a tall woman in Italy. Not that differences are so big (1-2 cm).

Why is it a tragedy? Pretty much all of Europe considers tall women beautiful.

[Grace O'Malley]

Some interesting excerpts.

Approximately since the 1980s, a beginning deceleration or even stagnation started to be apparent in some nations. After being the tallest in the world for 200 years, the US was overtaken by many Northern and Western European countries such as Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands (Komlos and Lauderdale, 2007).

If we also took single regions into account, the differences within Europe would be even greater. The first place on the continent would belong to Herzegovinian highlanders (185.2 cm) and the second one to Dalmatian Croats (183.8 cm).6 The shortest men live in Sardinia (171.3 cm; Sanna, 2002). Large differences in height exist even within some countries.

Unusually large differences are typical for Italy, where we can detect a 6.6 cm gap between Sardinia and the northeastern region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia (Sanna, 2002). In the western Balkans, geographical changes in body size are similarly striking, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The trend of increasing height has already stopped in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Germany. In Norway, military statistics date its cessation to late 1980s. Since that time, the average height of Norwegian conscripts aged 18–19 years has fluctuated between 179.4 and 179.9 cm.

In contrast, the positive trend of height still probably continues in Sweden and Iceland. The stature of Swedish conscripts was growing throughout the 1990s and reached 180.2 cm in 2004, which was a 0.7 cm increase in comparison with 1994 (Werner, 2007). Although these results may not be perfectly comparable, it is noteworthy that the mean in the latter study would decrease to 180.8 cm, if we included boys with immigrant origin. These made up 13.4% of the whole sample and their mean height was only 177.7 cm.

In contrast, the fastest pace of the height increase (≥1 cm/decade) can be observed in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Latvia, Belarus, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Turkey and at least in the southern parts of Italy. Interestingly, the adult male population in the Czech Republic also continues to grow at a rate of ∼1 cm/decade.

In many of the wealthiest countries (Austria, France, Switzerland, United Kingdom and USA) the increase is mostly steady, but slow.

They also say this about R1b which we know is no longer true and they don't split it up into L21 and DF27 but they do for U106 so that is a drawback. "The most frequent Y haplogroup of the western and southwestern part of Europe is R1b-S116 (R1b1a2a1a2-S116) that reaches maximum frequencies in Ireland (82%), Britain, France and on the Iberian peninsula (∼50%), and is in all likehood tied with the post-glacial expansion of the Magdalenian culture from the glacial refugium in southern France/Cantabria (Fig. 10b)."

The fundamental role of milk in the nutrition of European nations stems from the high prevalence of lactose tolerance—a very valuable genetic trait allowing a sufficient intake of milk even during adulthood. Although many scientists are still not certain about the evolutionary role of lactose tolerance in Europe, the findings of this study show that the ability to consume milk must have been a tremendeous advantage, because it opened up an additional source of nutrition that not only guaranteed survival in the periods of food shortage, but contained nutrients right of the highest natural quality. Interestingly, the correlation of lactose tolerance with the consumption of whole milk (r = 0.10; p = 0.62) and milk products in general (r = 0.59; p = 0.001) was weaker than that between lactose tolerance and male height (r = 0.71; p < 0.001) ( Fig. 12). This is the exact opposite of what we would expect. Considering that lactose tolerance is a genetic trait, it is possible that it may correlate with certain genes that determine tall stature.

Another evidence for this genetic hypothesis recently appeared in the study of Turchin et al. (2012), who found systematically higher presence of alleles associated with increased height in US whites of North European ancestry than in Spaniards.

[Skjaldemjøden]

I'm standing at exactly 180 cm at 23, so this is probably as tall as I'll ever get. My cousin, who is 15, is barely 2 cm shorter, and my little brother, 16, is already taller than me. So the increasing height trend is still alive and kicking.

[Willem]

Looks about right. I felt a little short when visiting Montenegro. Not so much in Bosnia but.

EDIT:

"If we also took single regions into account, the differences within Europe would be even greater. The first place on the continent would belong to Herzegovinian highlanders (185.2 cm) and the second one to Dalmatian Croats (183.8 cm)."

Hmmm... looks like highlanders win again.

The Netherlands is about 20% non-Dutch..

It wouldn't surprise me if ethnic Dutch are actually 2-3 cm taller on average than what is reported.

I am 192 cm myself.

[Venetkens]

The tragedy of being a tall woman in Italy. Not that differences are so big (1-2 cm).

How tall are you?

BTW North-West Italy would be like France and the North-East like Austria and Slovenia.

[Methmatician]

The Netherlands is about 20% non-Dutch..

It wouldn't surprise me if ethnic Dutch are actually 2-3 cm taller on average than what is reported.

All the people measured in the Dutch study are Dutch. So no, what they reported is the average height of Dutch people.

[Lusos]

At last a map closer to reality.

I mean some of this sort of maps had the average height for Portuguese at 1.69 cm.

Very rarely a Men in Portugal as that height .Women can have that height but still not the norm.

Ex.
Mum 1.70. Wife 1.72, Sister 1.78 , Niece (18 Years) 1.77 Daughter (12 Years) 1.68.