29 Jul 2006
The New Age: So Big and Healthy Nowadays That Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You

Now this is an interesting article: we're bigger than our ancestors, and we live longer, but why?

I wonder what the results of such a survey on an earlier, more agrarian period. Lot's of the men in this study were immigrants from the crowded cities of the time, right as the industrial revolution got into full swing, and farming was changing, too, from subsistence to cash cropping. I doubt if we have enough records to examine such a era, but it would be fascinating to see the variations.

It is one of the most striking shifts in human existence - a change from small, sickly people to humans who are so robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable.

(link) [New York Times]

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