Why Are There Short People?

There are still shirt people in the west because while there is an advantage in being tall, being short does not destroy one’s chances for reproductive success.

There’s some selective pressure to get taller, but it’s hardly overwhelming. Do a lot of people who are short have kids? Yes. Therefore, short genes get passed on. That’s totally ignoring the potential for people to pass on genes that don’t see expression in themselves as well.

Via Reihan Salam, Jared Diamond argues it was our move from hunter gatherers to agriculture:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2100251/Jared-Diamond-The-Worst-Mistake-in-the-History-of-the-Human-Race

“One straight forward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5’ 9″ for men, 5’ 5″ for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B.C. had reached a low of only 5’ 3″ for men, 5’ for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors.”

well, what if the genes(s) for being short are genetically linked to (i.e., colocated next to, and therefore jointly propagated along with) some other gene that carries some other survival advantage (bigger brains, malaria immunity, etc.) – that would be one “explanation” for why shortness persists.

What do you mean tallness hasn’t been selected for? How many dwarves are there in the world? How many pygmy societies exist?

That there is some variation that still exists doesn’t mean there wasn’t (and still is) the possibility for greater variation which has already been mostly removed.

The amount of variation that we currently see, with people more or less reaching their genetic potential, is a new phenomenon of the past few decades. Surely you wouldn’t expect THAT to have already been affected by natural selection.

It is difficult to achieve musculature. A man who achieves it demonstrates several desirable qualities that women cannot resist. Musculature demonstrates health, ability to get or access to resources and discipline in terms of being able to manage emotions and plan strategically for the future. Height, from a historical perspective, was even more of a sign of all of the above since achieving it was an even more difficult task with even larger rewards if achieved. Being shorter has an overwhelming survival advantage on many accounts; some named in comments above. Being muscular and especially being tall was EXCEEDINGLY expensive to achieve throughout our anthropological history. Tallness meant one had this privilege right from birth throughout. To become either meant unprecedented access to resources and enormously high status. And once either was achieved, they could hardly be taken away. Thus the few males who did achieve it had access to most of the females. The reason why men are taller than women is that we are in fact a highly polygamous species. It is nearly impossible to know for certain but compared to other mammals, we have likely been about an 80/20 species. In other words, 20% of the men get 80% of the women. We divide up into pairs to live, but our matting patterns, even to this very day, measure much closer to the 80/20 than most of us realize. 30% of all babies born in the United States do not belong to the father on record and you can bet that most dads have no idea that this has happened to them. I personally did a secret study that I cannot reveal or publish of my own on this; the odds of a family with 4 children having all 4 kids match dad’s genes are 4%. If you know someone who’s got 4, it is pretty easy, once you know this stat, to see that it is so! The tall gene is propagated massively through the secret dalliances of females. Another view on this same topic from a different angle…40% of all men will die without ever having sex (the figure is 4% for women.) 80% of US men are still virgins (though they’ll never admit it) at age 25. 80% of US women have had 6 sexual partners by the time they reach age 25.

Finally, 62% of income is determined by height. This holds true across borders, races, eithnicities, any groupings you care to try…your own work place..I guarantee it. Facial symmetry takes care of the next 30%. 8% of your lifetime income will be determined by education, hard work, brains etc etc. This is what it means to be human. Don’t think you are exempt! Look around you. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions. Artistic talent is the item most likely to buck this trend. Every girl loves a rock star eh? And how many of those did you run into at Starbucks today?

The facts of the day; plentiful food, relatively little violence, technological advances in medicine all play a huge roll in increasing heights; the female attraction mechanism is hard wired through evolution and likes what it likes. Tallness is no longer a sign of extraordinary survival genes, but women’s attraction mechanisms won’t catch up to that for another million years. Buy some elevator shoes.

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