Did Natural Selection Make the Dutch the Tallest People On the Planet?

sciencehabit writes The Dutch population has gained an impressive 20 centimeters in the past 150 years and is now officially the tallest on the planet. Scientists chalk up most of that increase to rising wealth, a rich diet, and good health care, but a new study suggests something else is going on as well: The Dutch growth spurt may be an example of human evolution in action. The study shows that tall Dutch men on average have more children than their shorter counterparts, and that more of their children survive. That suggests genes that help make people tall are becoming more frequent among the Dutch. "This study drives home the message that the human population is still subject to natural selection," says Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University who wasn't involved in the work. "It strikes at the core of our understanding of human nature, and how malleable it is."

Comments

Re:Dinos

[cayenne8]

Oh, and if you're curious, I'm an American who's completed all my schooling exclusively in the USA, and I was only taught metric.

...

Perhaps I should add that I graduated in 1984.

Interesting, I graduated HS in about the same time period....and aside from a small nod to the metric system, the only time it was ever actually used was in chemistry classes.

Where in the US did you go to school where they used the metric system exclusively? That is pretty rare indeed.

I know intrinsically how I need to dress if it is 30F.

I have no clue what to wear at 30C without looking up the conversion online....

And, since Slashdot is a US centric site, I like it when things are put into American common terminology.