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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."
Why wouldn't it?
This study drives home the message that the human population is still subject to natural selection
Obviously. It's surprising that some people think otherwise.
Well, 150 years is 6-8 human generations, so while selection certainly *could* happen, it would really have to be very strong to be observed. As in "tall Dutch people have twice as many healthy offspring".
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
All the short Dutch are below sea level
next they should do a study about how humans are also still subject to the law of gravity, and a study after that about how the laws of thermodynamics still hold sway over us.
I mean, who woulda thought that random mutations would actually make some people more or less likely to reproduce successfully?
As a low lying country Holland is at risk due to rising sea levels. Clearly being tall enough to keep your head above water is an advantage. ;-)
Clearly, evolution in the Dutch population is anticipating a massive collapse of the dikes.
They were selecting for taller people long before that- it's just that as nutrition changed the average height changed.
love is just extroverted narcissism
20 cm is what, about 8"? That seems like a rather large increase in average height in just 150 years
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Well, they DO have to keep their heads above the water in case a dike gives way.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If natural selection is the driving factor in increasing height among the Dutch, wouldn't other races have followed the same selection/mating patterns too? Especially in nearby nations with a similar cultural? Seems like there is some other factors involved...
Tall men have more children than their short peers. But short women have more children than their taller peers. In all modern western societies (not just The Netherlands)
http://www.livescience.com/22179-evolutionary-battle-sexes-height.html
But why would this preferentially affect this one country?
Natural selection can work in such time scales for humans, it is not like they are claiming that some random mutation generated all these super tall people that would have taken a few thousand years at least.
I have met several Dutch people in the US, and while all of them were very nice people, most of them were around average height.
Maybe they're just exporting the ones who don't meet their unstated height requirements?
Doesn't natural selection also include perception? Aren't there some species that choose mates based on colorful feathers or sounds, and those with the most colorful feathers or most desirable sounds tend to produce offspring more? So how is choosing a mate based on height any different?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Tall men are percieved as more powerful, commanding - look among military commanders and corporate executives for the short guys. No so many. It's a pattern that just exists. Tall guys tend to be strong guys, and they win physical fights even if they have to sit on the opponent. They gain a sense of control and tend to have the advantage in negotiations.
Women - godz help me here - tend to mate up with the winners. Tall men tend to be winners. Tall men tend to have families with more children, even if they have to marry and reproduce with many women serially. They tend to have that ability because they tend to make more money than shorter men. The advantage isn't noticable in everyday life, but the advantage works over centuries to produce a taller people as the short dudes tend to lose out in the carnival. People get taller.
Being tall does NOT need to lead to a survival advantage. It needs to lead to a higher rate of genes being present in the next generation.
A variation that conveys a material survival advantage is one mechanism to achieve this, since it's hard to pass on your genes if you're dead. However, it's not the only mechanism. A variation that conveys no actual survival advantage but makes the individual appear more attractive to the opposite sex may do nothing to help the individual live longer, but will favor that individuals genes in future generations. Look at the animal kingdom for myriad instances for overly ornate appendages, plumage, and behavior that's solely there to impress the opposite sex.
I suspect sexual selection is more the mechanism here than survival - the Dutch apparently just like their mates tall.
natural selection
Is it natural selection when women prefer taller men? Or is it societal?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence
Well, we do have a lot of wheat here.
Dutch people ale avid milk drinkers and meat eaters. The average height of Dutch people has increased significantly over the past generations since WW-II, coinciding with the increasing availability of dairy products (there's been a surplus, referred to as 'The Milk Puddle' and the 'Butter Mountain') and cheaper meat ('Kilo Crackers' and 'Poof Chickens'). In the 60s and 70s there were elaborate national media campaigns to encourage milk consumption. Milk was even distributed for free by elementary schools in the 70s and early 80s. The use of growth hormone in dairy cattle is forbidden. Yet, it leaves me wondering whether there's a relation between hormones, dairy intake and increased height of Dutch people over the generations.
If this is a matter of existing genes being switched on or off, then 150 years isn't too short of a time.
There are two big drivers on the evolution of sexual species, natural selection and female choice.
The two don't always go in the same direction, and in some cases they can point into opposing paths leading the species into a dead end.
For example Elks compete on antler size, and females prefer large males with big antlers, these are good when it comes to ritual fights with competing males but are a big drawback when it comes to denser wood forests. And most of the time are a large dead weight to carry around.
Peacocks also carry around a big tail for basically the same reasons, and both are examples of adverse selection in which an overall negative trait gets perceived as a positive genetic proxy by females.
Height in humans has a big weight when it comes to female selection, it is considered by large as a positive trait. And we usually tend to defer to taller people, even if that behavior isn't justified on any other social attributes.
The problem with height is that it requires extra consumption of calories and protein to enable growth, besides extra changes in the population hormonal profile to enable accelerated growth. This is all fine on our present food production output, if that changes taller people are at a disadvantage.
It's a way of advertising that you have access to resources. Likewise, a woman's breasts (proportionally much larger than any other primate) does the same.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Because they're below sea level!
So they can account for us Dutch folks being taller than other cultures through evolutionary forces, but can that account for Dutch Butt too?
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
I come to slashdot for the rye remarks.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Maybe the taller ones avoid being suffocated in a dutch oven
In The Netherlands it's usually thought that diet was the most influencing factor behind this effect. Over the last centuries we have had plenty dairy products, no severe food shortages, in contrary, we had a reasonable high availability of varied food. Combined with relative welfare in the golden age. There are probably many other factors too, however, to grow tall you need more food on average, and so it must be available first.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
The irony in this is absolutely priceless :-D
Corollary: Since studies have also shown that people with higher intelligence tend to have fewer children, taller people therefore have lower intelligence than shorter people
There seems to be a cultural preference as well.
Stulp pointed to figures showing that, in the United States, shorter women and men of average height have the most reproductive success.
"There is much variation in what men and women want," he said.
"When it comes to choosing a mate, height tends to have (only) a small effect, which is not very surprising given the many other, more important, traits people value in their mate."
5' to 5'8"?
What I have seen that it is the type of food that had a huge impact in the growth. Especial from the 60ies on, people would eat healthier and thus were able to grow more when they were infants.
Now count back from the sicties and you get to WW2. People born just after WW2 were much, much, much healthier foodwise. They were in their 20 in the 60ies-70ies and that is when people were born became longer.
Natural selection does not happen in 2 generations.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
+5 Insightful
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
If the evolution of the Dinos is anything to go by, in 100 million years, the Dutch will be 25 meters tall and Americans will be 25 meters wide...
This isn't "evolution".
Mod this +1 insightful. Disclaimer: i am dutch.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
It would be even more ironic if Shortguy881 was Dutch!
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
I assume this means a higher percentage survive. It wouldn't be very interesting to note that a higher overall number of people in a group survive when that group had more people to start with!
Anyway.. if a higher percentage really do survive then I find that much more interesting than the fact that taller men have more children.
I'm not sure I would even call taller men having more children "natural" selection. Modern society and technology means that women have a wider variety of men to chose from. They don't have to chose one of the few unrelated males in their village. They probably live in a big city and even if not travel is relatively easy today. Also.. as for preference. We have TV now to tell us all what to prefer and that it is important. Maybe tall men are what's "cool" on their TV.
I'd call that unatural selection.
However.. if a higher percentage of tall men's children survive.. What's killing the short ones? Do the short genes come with predispositions towards ilness? Does society somehow make being short more dangerous? (ex, difficult to see over obstacles before crossing the road or something) What is going on?!?
No need to be such a crumpet
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Why wouldn't it?
short timescale during which all dutch converted into having enough food from not having enough food.
same story as in Finland. beds just from 100 years ago are just ridiculous. I'm 20cm taller than my grandparents, few centimeters taller than my father and genes don't have so much to do with it vs. how we got fed when growing up.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Perhaps this is why Nigel Powers Hates the Dutch. Simply short mans syndrome.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I've noticed a fair number of very attractive short women often end up with short men.
It may be that generally speaking people prefer a mate who is similar to them in size -- perhaps there's even some evolutionary biology explanation where small women prefer a smaller mate because it reduces the risk to her of having a large baby that is difficult to birth. Maybe it's some kind of social psychology, a small woman may believe a large man will be unpleasant to mate with because of his bulk or that somehow big men have big penises and would be painful to have sex with.
But whenever I notice it, I find it strange that if male height is some kind of marker for desirability why a very attractive woman who could otherwise gain a taller mate who would come with the all the social and perhaps even physical advantages of height actively choose mates who are not just closer to them in height but below average in height.
We have sentience now. Human science will quickly eclipse any and all forms of random evolution.
It's disconcerting to see people treat evolution as if it's some sort of holy imperative decreed by Gaea.
At yeast he had a point.
That's because scientists and/or journalist use Natural Selection and Evolution interchangeably, even though they are distinctly different. It makes it hard to trust these articles when they can't even use the right terms. This is a case of natural selection.
In their warrior-ruled society they grew steadily larger on an essentially fixed island diet. The longest arms with the biggest club ruled. The recent king of Tonga was ~6'4". But also, in WW1 a doctor noticed the marked height difference in Aussies and Brits, both from the same region of Britain 50 years before. The Aussies' diet was the factor there.
It isn't evolution it is natural selection. Taller people are more fit (more babies) than shorter, this has continued for a few generations so shorter people are simply getting outbreed by taller people. So the average is going up.
Not at all surprised by this. Men who are less than 6 feet tall are barely even men, and women would never be with them unless all the tall men are taken and they can't do any better.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
maybe something about modern technology, medicine, government and religion all somehow interfere and render evolution no longer applicable?
That just changes the evolutionary pressures. It does not eliminate them altogether.
I am about 2.04 meter and let me assure you that length does matter.
Notice that Netherlanders from outside Holland and North Holland aren't as tall as Hollanders... and these other states are above sea level. QED.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
At yeast he had a point.
I was thinking you are just trying to get someone to raise up and tell you off. But, you are likely just a fungi telling a bad pun. Me, too. Tim S.
It's all that loafing around.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Whether you believe in Adam and Eve or Mitochondrial Eve you believe that everyone on the planet is ultimately descended from a single pair of humans.
There are a few Bible believers that think God has taken a hand in human development since then (curse of Ham and the black race - a rather racist and vile view, probably others I've not heard of). But almost every religious and all Darwinists believe in variation within kind, and despite quite a bit of variation all living humans are of the same species.
There is certainly a mix of natural and non-natural evolution within the process of human evolution. For example, being selected for soldier duty based on observable characteristics. Being selected for death because you were Jewish and living in Nazi Germany are just 2 clear examples of artificial selection pressure.
Being considered a more desirable mate because you are tall, short, etc. clear falls in the natural selection category.
It is clear a mix of selection styles in the human population.
We also have environmental factors that affect height. Nutrition and health care are simply the most obvious factors. Given the short timescales for the amount of change and the fact that we also see similar changes in other countries as they have modernized we can be quite comfortable in assigning most of the modern change to environmental factor.
We also have plenty of examples of isolation populations of humans being considerably taller or shorter than average. So clearly genetics may also make a considerable difference. As populations interbreed, genetic differences become a more minor component in human variation.
Though the details may be of interest, the broad strokes of this question were already well-known and accepted by almost every person with a modern education.
You wish that this is limited to the US. Sorry. Same shit here in the EU.
According to Wikipedia, that makes you slightly shorter than the average Dutch male, but significantly taller than the average Dutch female, so it's not surprising that you would be taller than most people.
Long life does not equal quality life. The Japanese have had close to zero population growth for over a decade.
The Netherlands is a very tolerant place, and has a lot of foreigners from all over the world living in the larger cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam - and this is no new thing. Being Dutch doesn't mean you are a two-meter tall blonde - but there are enough of them here to push the average height up a bit.
I'm 6' tall and have lived in Tokyo and Amsterdam. I used to be the tallest guy in the elevator, now I'm used to being the shortest.
Also noteworthy is that there are relatively few overweight people in both Japan and NL, but I'm from the US, so I think that about everywhere except the UK :)
In the north west of Germany (Oldenburg etc.) 150 km (93 miles) away from the Netherlands. People are also taller than for example in the south of Germany. From personal experience, I would determine the difference to be around 10 cm (4 inches).
Dutch women Rock!
Lucky guy.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Mainly because Amercians are too stupid to actually get irony.
Hey! It was a Canadian who wrote the most popular song about irony where most of her examples were more tragic or unfortunate than ironic--so the most popular song about irony isn't really about irony at all, which is really quite ironic, don't ya think? Which . . . come to think of it . . . might be what she was trying to accomplish through meta-irony! Boy this is starting to hurt my head. Maybe I am too stupid to understand irony. Oh wait, you weren't talking about Americans, you were talking about Amercians, those people from Amercia. Never mind.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
I'm a Dutchman. I've been on on-line dating sites and length is definitely high on the list of desirable features Dutch women are looking for. It is explicitly stated. I'm 4 inch/10 cm shorter than the Dutch average for young people, and may length has definitely been a disadvantage.
When I'm abroad (say southern France), I feel TALL.
Is this desire for tall men just Dutch or is it a general thing?
Bert
Apart from being tall, being able to play guitar is also looked for. At least that is something one could do something about.
Let's not see the same post repeated by a jerk who is compensating for some lack of size in a critical location.
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I guess for examples of natural selection I always think of the weaker, sicker, or less well adapted who are unable to survive as well, so they get removed from the gene pool before passing their genes on.
Saying tall men have more kids doesn't feel like natural selection. I think it would be more like socioeconomic selection. Tall men make more money and so can have more kids and they get better healthcare.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
No evolution doesn't care how long you live, only that you live long enough to reproduce.
Time to offend someone
There are social aspects to natural selection. In highschool and university, my female classmates (especially the tall ones) preferred taller males. Being significantly taller than average gave me a significant advantage in courting and retaining my girlfriend - despite me being a nerd.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
Since my father's great-grandparents came from northern Europe, I think this might be the case (I am significantly taller than average).
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
I chaff at your pun.
Don't dress up your sarcasm in floury language.
If you set a goal of what you expect from the offspring and then choose the parents accordingly, you are doing selective breeding.
The goal does not have to be intentional or explicit. Artificial selection can occur simply because the environment is controlled but no attempt is made to influence the outcome beyond the environmental constraints. Humans have controlled the environment for ourselves but we (generally) have not set a specific selection outcome. It's some times called controlled natural selection because it kind of shares traits of both natural and artificial selection. Selective breeding does not require a goal to occur.
That's not natural selection, it's mate choice: women often prefer taller men, so unless there are other forces at work, tallness is selected for. Many aspects of human male bodies are likely selected for that way.
Another example of this is the size of the human penis, which is quite large compared to the human body; it's much smaller, say, in gorillas. The biological explanation is that gorilla males forcibly select their females, so mate choice doesn't have an impact, while in human populations, females generally select male mates and prefer generally more visible male sexual characteristics (up to a point).
It's sexual selection. That's different.
I felt tiny and I'm 6'2" (1.8m). I also felt claustrophobic as even in the countryside you could only see as far as the nearest hedge, it really is very flat. I guess without hills every inch counts to making your field of vision larger (find more mates) and to being found by potential mates.
Doesn't natural selection also include perception? Aren't there some species that choose mates based on colorful feathers or sounds, and those with the most colorful feathers or most desirable sounds tend to produce offspring more? So how is choosing a mate based on height any different?
Well, I think that you'll find that most matters of perception are actually selecting for traits that correlate to either health, youth, or fertility, all promoting more surviving children. Colorful feathers, sounds, clear skin, long silky hair, all correlate to these features. Our very past ancestors that favored them, ended up having more children and our bred those with other selection criteria. I would expect that height also corresponds to health.
As the land sinks, they have to become taller to see over the dykes - both kinds...
If I were much below average height, and if I had been born in a community where the average height had increased to over six feet, I would leave.
I would leave for a number of reasons. One is lessened economic opportunity, another is the now and again intimidation factor, and lastly the reduced access to females due to the females being taller.
It is not true that women prefer the taller men in group. Other factors are much more important to women than height, and those other factors are always present. However, there is a caveat. Very few women will mate with a man that is shorter than herself, with the exception of significant wealth or power. I dare say that most young women would rather go without sex than settle for a short guy.
So I'm wondering if part of the accelerated natural selection process that seems to be happening in the NL is due to the short-genes guys having left for greener pastures.
I am not a scientist but my understanding is this is natural selection, or the adjustment of existing genes to environmental "stresses". Evolution would be the addition of a new gene that never existed before. So my thinking is no.
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
Intelligence is the yeast of our problems.
By 1 year (2 years for women). Even if you exclude the Dutch military (who die at a slightly higher rate than civilians), since Japan doesn't really have one, that does not sound like a big deal.
Enjoy your extra year of being short :P
Pot makes you high.
Your statement "Actually the only meaningful indicator of "evolution" is life expectancy" is ridiculous on it's face. So 10,000 year old stands of Aspen or giant clams are more 'evolved' than humans?
love is just extroverted narcissism
There was some discussion recently that women live longer after menopause (and longer than men) because grandmothers were useful for helping their daughters raise babies in hunter/gatherer societies. Grandfathers were a burden.
"I'm all for evolution, but I didn't think it functioned on 150-year timescales?"
Well, it goes one day to the next: your offspring either owns new alleles or it doesn't.
But you are right to some extent: this is not evolution but genotype distribution's drift.
They are not saying here that new alleles have appeared (that's evolution) but that the relative distribution of some alleles have changed over time.
A more obvious example: say in the past, 6/10 people had brown eyes, 2/10 blue and 2/10 green but now, due to a long-running TV show where green-eyed people are the stars, you get 4/10 brown, 5/10 green and 1/10 blue. Where's the "evolution" here? You see, no new eye colors, just different distribution.
Think it's more that the taller people having more kids is pulling up their average height. Are Americans evolving to be more "Latin" since Latin birthrates in the US is higher than other ethnicities?
This wouldn't surprise me. I have heard similar things about humans and our extended non reproductive years compared to other mammals. But in general evolution doesn't tend to care (yes I know) much about non reproductive years.
Time to offend someone
I don't understand?
-An American
Depends on the severity of the culling. If monsters suddenly appeared in Holland and ate everyone under 2 meters tall in one night, evolution would happen rather quickly.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
This article supports your statement. http://www.scientificamerican....
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The sum total of thousands of tiny changes (adaptations) over a long period of time = evolution.
Evolution is reversible. Evolutionary pressures can act in reverse.
It is best to think of evolution in terms of "has an organism changed". If it has changed, then it has evolved. So even one tiny change, whilst it does not necessarily show any dramatic difference, is evolution.
The world is not a static thing. It is continually slowly changing in every way. It's just the way it is.
He's just trying to get a rise out of you... But the ideas are only half-baked.
Highest? Come on! 300 comments nearly, and not a single good "the Dutch are the highest" joke?
I'd say that change over time is 100% certain for everything. Nothing has ever been the same since time began. The state of the universe is change.
Lots of mutations consistently happening over a long period of time is not even analogous to "then a miracle occurs", let alone "exactly equivalent".
There is proof that small mutations occur. There is not proof of mutation occurring in real time. I.e. no one has observed a mutation happen under a microscope (we don't have the technique) - we have proof after the fact by comparing changes in DNA.
Nothing happened "just right". It just happened. It is essentially meaningless. You shouldn't care about it.
You might as well start asking "what are the chances that matter is attracted to matter?" or "what are the chances that all the stars in the milky way lined up to make a giant spiral arm?".
Stuff happens, we see it happening, we can model it, we don't know why it exists, that is life, enjoy it while it lasts. :)
Are Americans evolving to be more "Latin" since Latin birthrates in the US is higher than other ethnicities?
If you want to think of "American" as a sub-species, then yes, Americans are definitely becoming more Latin.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
NAtural selection certainly can work that quickly if the genes are strong enough, and econoomic factors come into play. In most countries it's the poor people that have the most children . Statistically, poor people are much shorter, so naturally the majortity of any such region would be shorter.. Look it up on google if you want proof. Also some genetics for short people are dominant, such as Malaysians and, in fact, most Asians.. In parts of Scandinavia and especially the Netherlands, however, it's the affluent people that have children most often, and more of them. Coupled with the Dutch genetic tendancy in certain regions to be very tall already, it's natural this woiuld occur. Not all Dutch are genetically disposed to be tall.. Freislanders , as in my family, tend to be short. Conversely, Amsterdamers are notoriously tall.
According to a the Notes section of John Ciardi's translation of Dante's Inferno, "The men of Friesland were reputed to be the tallest in Europe." So apparently there was a tall affinity for Frieslanders in 1321. Or perhaps there is a pendulum swing and they are in an up cycle?
Canto XXI,line 63 to 64:
"three Frieslanders standing on the rim, standing one on another, could not have reached his hair;"
Tracy Johnson
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BT
It's not the Russians? There's a very tall tribe of Africans i'd heard of too...
Precisely what I thought when I read the title.