Height is a proxy indicator for nutrition and well being; data shows that Africans were doing better than the world prior to the independence decade.
IF South-Sudan born basketball player and political activist Manute Bol were alive, on October 16 he would have celebrated his 52nd birthday.
But that won’t be. Bol died on June 19, 2010 in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the US. Perhaps Bol, at 7 ft 7 in tall, is most famous as one of the tallest men ever to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
He might have stuck out in the modern age, but in ancient Africa he might not have been noticed as much.
Those African of days gone by who were supposedly “primitive” or “backward”, did much better than us today in one area – they were taller, suggesting that they fed more nutritious diets than we do.
The tall shall rule the world
Africa was actually taller than the world average until the 1960s, when the gap closed and the trend begun to reverse, now, the average 24-35 year-old in Africa is 1.4cm shorter than his age mates around the world.
Height shouldn’t matter – but it does. Numerous studies show that tallness, particularly in men, does confer many social and economic benefits. Tall men have better success with women and are more likely to be married and have children.
Employers have been shown to prefer tall candidates in job interviews, and are likely to offer them bigger salaries. One study showed that for each inch in height, a person earned about $789 a year more in pay; so a 6-foot person would earn $5,525 more each year than someone who is 5’5”.
Tall men apparently also have higher self-esteem than short men, and this confidence is often interpreted as innate leadership qualities (whether deserved or not), and this has sneaked into our lexicon – we “look up” to people we admire but “down” on those we despise.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink quoted a study that indicated 30% of American CEOs were 6’2” or taller, but only 3.9% of American men in general were 6’2” or taller.
This stunning report by OECD titled How Was Life: Global Well Being since 1820 gives the trends of human stature among different populations around the world since the 19th century – and gives us a hint on how people fared in the past.
The OECD study reveals that Africans born in the 1870s all the way to the 1940s grew up to be 1-2 cm taller than the world average, suggesting that despite a high infant and child mortality, and a heavy disease burden, things weren’t so bad – as Europe and America were battling the squalor and overcrowding of the Industrial Age, African children in the villages were happily getting their bellies full.
But the trend began to reverse in Africa starting with children born in 1930s; by the 1950s, they grew up to be just 0.2cm taller than the rest of the world.
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