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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.
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.
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.
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
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".