Why are Dutch fencers so bloody tall?
Once again, the fact that the Dutch are a nation of very tall people has made the news (Dutch men revealed as world's tallest, BBC).
As a regular-sized foreigner living in the Netherlands at 173 cm or 5'8" (on the left, banana for scale) I normally wouldn’t find this noteworthy or interesting. Much like some people apparently don’t “see race”, I couldn’t care less about the height of the natives. Or at least I didn’t until I got into historical fencing, where being taller is a significant advantage. Now I get to spend quite a lot of my time working out how to get around my reach disadvantage -- as is reflected in some of my previously shared posts, such as Non-technical Longsword advice for vertically challenged beginners by @gunmetalskies and Myths of the Short Person in Martial Arts by Keith Farrel.
So now not only am I fencing disturbingly tall people, I’m also asking myself why on earth they are so tall in the first place. Is their condition reversible? Could they ever go back to a normal size?
You might think, like some of my friends do, that the Dutch have simply just always been tall, and that the mysterious origins of their height are lost in time. You know, the old myth about Germanic warriors being remarkably big and strong (at least compared to Romans) as Tacitus or Seneca described (Tacitus mentions that the Germans have common characteristics of blue eyes, blond or reddish hair and large size).
As it turns out, that might have been just a bit of rubbish Roman propaganda and they weren’t always this tall. In fact, as recently as 1850, The Dutch were, surprisingly, one of the shortest nations in Europe (Why the Dutch are so tall, Randy Olson):
While googling this stuff, I found out that the study of human growth is known as auxology. Growth and height have long been recognised as a measure of the health and wellness of individuals. However, science alone seems unable to explain why the Dutch in particular are now taller than their neighbours under similar conditions, as there is no clear scientific consensus. It remains a bit of a mystery (Scientists try to answer why Dutch people are so tall, The Guardian).
So unburdened with any prior knowledge on the subject of evolutionary biology or sociocultural anthropology, and just a very sketchy understanding of European history, I decide to have a go at coming up with some viable theories. These are my top 3:
Theory 1: The tallest survive in swampy conditions
The Dutch are well known for their water management skills. Water is in their genes. The Dutch windmills, once used to pump out excess water, dikes and levees form a powerful international image. From the early middle ages onward, the Dutch have reclaimed and defended their land from the sea (Dutch water management history).
But before that this country was essentially a big swamp. Prior to 1255, when the first official regional water authority in the Netherlands was founded, the Dutch survived the constant floods by living on 'terps', man-made hills on which to retreat when floods occur. Even after that, the Dutch have had constant flooding and continuous development in water management strategies to deal with these persistent flooding threats well up into the 19th century (Dutch river defences in historical perspective). By the 21st century the Netherlands is the best protected delta in the world, and they are the utmost global experts in water management, but at what cost?
Well, as you might have guessed, the first to perish in flooded areas are those under water level. Survival of the fittest in this context means those able to keep their heads above water over extended periods of time. Simply put, the shorter Dutch people kept on drowning and removing themselves from the gene pool.
Theory 2: The tallest don’t survive trench warfare
Another theory I heard from a fellow researcher at the pub was that the tallest men died first in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I. Deaths occur for many different reasons in addition to actual war, including lack of sanitation. But whereas most died of disease in 19th century warfare, about two-thirds of military deaths in World War I were in battle.
Most casualties were due to the horrifying combination of modern weaponry being used together with out-of-date tactics. Detailed statistics are incredibly hard to come by, but we know that from a grand total of 65 million men mobilised, 8.5 million died, 21 million were wounded, and 7.7 million PoW/missing. That is a total of 37 million casualties, or 57% of the men mobilised (WW1 casualties).
But were taller soldiers statistically at greater risk of being shot? It is impossible to know exactly, seeing how difficult it is to determine what the survival rate of going over the top in a battle such as the Somme was (a 17.5% KIA rate and a 34.7 WIA rate according to this analysis), but it is reasonable to assume that taller soldiers overall had a lower expectation of survival in an environment where head-shots were the primary thing. The first ones to stick their heads above the parapet were the ones most likely to get shot. It stands to reason that the survivors would be, generally speaking, of below average height at the end of the war.
What does this have to do with the Dutch being comparatively tall? Well, many nations fought in the Great War, but the Netherlands was never directly involved. While the Germans, French, British or Belgians lost an entire generation of tall men, the Dutch were never impacted by that massive dip in population growth that the rest of Europe experienced.
Theory 3: Sexual selection by female choice
This last theory came about when I read a post on the @expatshaarlem tumblr page written by some foreigners struggling with the Dutch dating scene: is flirtation a foreign concept in the Netherlands?
Among other things, the article points out that the tall and reserved Dutch men do not initiate direct contact with the women they are interested in, but at most signal their interest from a discreet distance in order for the female to approach them if they are also interested. It is up to Dutch women to initiate contact with men for sex. That’s right. They basically just sit around being tall and handsome and women come to them.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach of course (aside from being quite the opposite of most other places involving humans), but let’s consider the practical consequences. (With preemptive apologies to any tumblrinas that might be offended by this oversimplification, but non-binary mating preferences are statistically irrelevant when it comes to breeding populations).
It is a known fact that Dutch males are selected by being tall, but this is no different from other female populations. Women prefer taller men elsewhere, so this is by no means a localised preference, as it doesn’t explain why these men have more reproductive success than others. What is different is the mating selection process; i.e. who is taking the initiative, and therefore selecting those chosen traits above others. It falls out of the scope of this article to discuss what males prefer in terms of physical attributes when selecting a female, but I think we can all agree that “being of above average height” is not top of the list of what men are particularly looking for in a woman. But if the women are the ones selecting mates based on their choices, those are the attributes that are being passed on.
To try to put it in behavioural biology terms, the dominant female choice on the mating partner (selecting their mates on grounds of the relative size) has an effect on trait divergence within a given population, as it affects the evolution of those chosen male characteristics. Fortunately simply being tall is not a characteristic that impairs survival, which is one of the concerns that evolutionist have (all of them men I can’t help but notice) when studying preference for mates based on female sexual selection.
The Dutch are probably very tall because they had too keep their head above water when they lived in a swamp, they avoided being shot in World War 1, they’ve had access to an improved diet in recent times and their women have chosen to have babies with tall men.
This is mostly just made up BS of course, but if anyone has other amusing theories I’d be interested to hear them.
