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How does your height compare to your great-grandparents? Chances are you'll be noticeably taller.
Today, young adults around the world are, on average, about 10 cm taller than their ancestors 100 years ago, according to the research publication Our World in Data.
A 2016 study comparing people born in 1896 and 1996 found that South Korean women and Iranian men have grown the most: 20 cm and 17 cm respectively.
This is due to improvements in diet, the disease environment, vaccines and many other factors, says Dr. Aravinda Guntupalli, senior lecturer in global health at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
But the history of human height has not always been a linear rise.
Over thousands of years, diet, wars, disease, and other major social changes have caused fluctuations in our height.
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A window to history
According to researchers, height can give us a more complete view of living standards when other types of historical or statistical data are lacking.
"Height is a good indicator of well-being," says Dr. Matthias Blum, an economic historian and honorary professor at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland.
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Studies suggest that up to 80% or even 90% of height is determined by genetics.
How does your height compare to people in the rest of the world?
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The remainder, although small, is influenced by factors such as nutrition, exposure to disease, childhood environment, and access to health care.
"Greater height reflects a higher standard of living," says Blum.
To take genetic variation into account, he explains that researchers analyze average height in large populations to reveal trends and inequalities that measures such as GDP do not detect.
Did agriculture make us shorter?
Historically, two turning points stand out, according to Blum.
The first occurred with the Neolithic Revolution, when humans switched from hunting and gathering to agriculture between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago.
To study such ancient trends, researchers rely on skeletal data, which has its limitations. However, most agree that the rise of agriculture caused a decrease in height.
A 2022 study, which took genetic variation into account, estimated that Neolithic people were, on average, 2.8 cm shorter than expected compared to people from the pre-Neolithic period.
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The rise of agriculture brought with it a more stable food supply, but not necessarily better nutrition.
Hunter-gatherers included more animal products in their diet, which Blum says is essential.
"We're talking about starvation or non-starvation, and based on that, consuming more animal products is a good idea because it's really essential for obtaining amino acids," he says.
According to Blum, in addition to being better fed, hunter-gatherers were able to move around, leaving their waste behind. Farmers, however, do not.
They suffered from infectious diseases and "had to work hard, they had to maintain their houses and their livestock, and they lived alongside the animals."
Over the following millennia, altitude rose and fell in different regions, but according to Blum, the changes often did not last.
"For a long time, there was no clear trend. There were famines, there were wars, but the populations recovered later," he says.
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Some crises had unexpected consequences. Height estimates following the Black Death, a pandemic that killed up to half of Europe's population in the mid-14th century, show increases.
Research that Guntupalli and his colleagues carried out on skeletal remains in England revealed that the average height in the early 14th century was around 170 cm. This figure increased to approximately 174 cm at the beginning of the 15th century.
According to her, there is not much data, but she speculates that height "perhaps increased due to an increase in wages, since the labor shortage gave greater bargaining power to workers and may have improved their standard of living."
'"Innovations package"
According to Blum, the second major change in human height came with the Industrial Revolution, which began in 18th-century Britain and spread to other parts of the world.
Industrialization transformed economies, moving from agriculture to industry, driving massive urbanization, introducing new technologies and expanding international trade networks.
This caused an increase in height, but not immediately.
The early industrial environment “was not conducive to health,” Guntupalli says. Poor sanitation, overcrowded housing, and strenuous factory work led to declining height in the early decades in several countries.
Blum claims that in major industrial centers, people even slept in the same bed in shifts.
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Only later, as incomes rose and public health measures were expanded, did height begin to increase significantly.
Blum attributes this to improvements in sanitation, housing and food, as well as the invention of medical technology.
"It's a set of innovations that work together," he explains.
Although South Korea experienced industrialization later, its rapid economic development was accompanied by one of the most dramatic increases in average height recorded in the last century: 15 cm for men and 20 cm for women, according to the 2016 analysis.
Peaking?
The global average height among people born in 1996 is 171 cm for men and 159 cm for women, Our World in Data reports.
In today's highly developed countries, rising incomes, productivity, products and services no longer appear to translate into higher average height, says Blum.
The reason is not clear; Some researchers believe those populations may have reached a peak determined by their genes, or that it may be related to the rise of fast food and sedentary lifestyles.
Blum says that in the future we might need to find new measures of "biological living standards" in addition to height.
For example, it states that an increase in vegan and vegetarian diets does not necessarily translate into higher average height, but could have other benefits, such as being healthier or more sustainable.
When it comes to the world at large, Guntupalli is skeptical about the possibility of humans continuing to grow taller, pointing to food and energy poverty, and the "very, very stark inequalities" that exist today.
Low- and middle-income countries "have higher rates of stunting, and the poorest people within these countries are the shortest," he says.
Stunting occurs when children are too short for their age, which leads to adults being shorter.
Additionally, according to Guntupalli, extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, are affecting food production and access to milk and other animal products.
"We are also experiencing budget cuts in global health, so many vaccination programs, feeding programs and many refugee programs are affected," he adds.
Guntupalli believes that with this "perfect storm" we will see an increase in height inequality not only between rich and poor countries, but also within societies themselves.
"We live in an unequal world," he summarizes.
This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
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