For much of the history of humankind, bigger has been better. As our ancestors got taller, they became faster and stronger, allowing them to better hunt food and avoid predators.
But in a world where we no longer need to fight for our meals, our height offers no real advantage.
In fact, if we could shrink our size down to just 50cm, we would need only two to five per cent of the resources required by an average-sized human.
That’s according to the calculations of 6′ 4′ Dutch artist, Arne Hendriks, who says that the planet’s growing population – currently at seven billion – is unsustainable.
‘I have some bad news for you,’ he told a TEDxBrainport in 2012. ‘You’re not short enough.’
He says being tall is no longer ‘a desired result in an age of increasing scarcity’.
The artist points out that for the last two million years, the height of mammals has risen dramatically, according to an in-depth report by Nautilus.
And in the last century, the average man has grown by four inches in the last century due to improvements in diet and public health, say scientists.
In 1900 a typical male was 5ft 6in tall, but by 2000 that had gone up to 5ft 10in. Over the same time women have grown by one-and-a-half inches, from just under 5ft 3in to just over 5ft 4in.
Researchers put the growth spurt mostly down to pregnant mothers eating better food which meant their babies grew up to be stronger and healthier.
Better sanitation and improvements in technology has also played a part by rescuing mankind from endless illness, malnutrition and brutal working conditions. URRE
But while better conditions have made people taller, being tall no longer offers an evolutionary advantage.
In fact, tall people have lower life expectancies, on average, than short people.
Several years ago Hendriks launched a project that he dubbed the ‘Incredible Shrinking Man’ to spread his ideas .
The aim was to challenge our assumption that being bigger is more useful.
Hendriks says shrinking down humans would allow us to consume vastly fewer resources, and move us from a world of scarcity into one of abundance.
‘One tomato will make a decent soup and one chicken will feed a hundred,’ Hendriks writes on his site.
It sounds like an unrealistic concept. But Hendriks says that it may be scientifically possible to cook up some type of elixir that will slow growth. Another way to do this would be to tweak our DNA, he adds.
But there are some major disadvantages to being 50-cm. For instance, our brains ‘wouldn’t be much bigger than a walnut’, says Hendriks.
Researchers, however, say a reduction in brain size doesn’t necessarily mean a loss of intelligence.
They point out that over the last 20,000 years, our brains have become naturally smaller by we have got smarter.
Hendriks says, regardless of whether it’s scientifically possible, the most important thing is that we start rethinking the possibilities of the small.
It may be, he claims, the only option to save our planet.
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