QUESTION OF PHYSICAL DEGENERATION 235 



II 



STATURE 



IT was a fixed belief of many early peoples that their ancestors Stature 

 were bigger and stronger than themselves. The Romans looked 

 back to a Golden Age in which everything was better than in ages 

 their own time, as the things of their own day were better than 

 those of years to come. Among modern theorists there is no 

 such unanimity. There is a great bel/ef in progress, that is, 

 if we define it, progress in civilisation. And this has often been 

 confused with improvement due to evolution. As to stature 

 there is a tendency towards the view that men now are at any 

 rate not inferior to their forefathers. 



What we want is facts and it is curious what a dearth of them 

 there is. It so seldom happens that average representatives of a 

 class or a place are measured. They are usually picked men, 

 soldiers, for instance, or undergraduates who go to be measured 

 because they are proud of their height. And even if we had an 

 ample supply of facts, the interpretation of them would still be 

 very difficult. 



To Dr Rahon we are indebted for a number of interesting 

 measurements and calculations founded on them. According to 

 him the Neolithic men in what is now France were not quite 

 5ft. 4in. in height, the " protohistoric " men were about Jin. over 

 5 ft. 5 in. and the Frenchmen of the Middle Ages were 5 ft. 5j 

 in. or a shade over. 1 So the Neolithic men were by no means 

 giants: the "protohistoric" men (I am not sure of the exact 

 meaning of the term) were fairly tall, and the Frenchmen of 

 the Middle Ages were a trifle shorter than the last named. 

 Interesting as these measurements are, it may be questioned 

 whether they throw much light on our present subject, since the 

 representatives of the different periods do not represent one and 

 the same people. Successive waves of migration swept over 

 western Europe, each modifying the existing physical type. So 



1 See Knowledge, December 1894. 



