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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."
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.
All the short Dutch are below sea level
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.
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.
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.
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.
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
The irony in this is absolutely priceless :-D
+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...
I doubt that this is right. It's just a misconception to say that in a first-world society, fertility is pretty much the same thing as attractiveness. It's not. In fact, the people who are broadly judged to be most desirable - the people with Ph.D's, sixpack abs and fancy jobs - have fewer children that the average. A much stronger driver of first-world fertility in a place like NL is: Who's sloppy with their birth control, who's impulsive enough to think things like "Yeah, I should just have the baby!", who's someone that thinks that having a child is going to fix the problems in their relationship, etc.
For these fertility increasers to be correlated with height is just weird and hard to explain, but it's obviously real, so there much be some mechanism. But that mechanism is not as simple as "Taller men get more girls".
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'
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
Intelligence is the yeast of our problems.