"In the US today, the average adult male height is 175.3 cm, in India average adult male heights are 10 cm shorter, at 165 cm. However, Indian men from the upper classes are 174.4 cm tall, and less than 1 cm shorter than Americans, which suggests the difference is not genetic but nutritional. For comparison, German 17–18 year old schoolkids were reaching 175 cm just before WW2…. The Maddison dataset claims the GDP per capita of Greece two thousand years ago was about 1,300 dollars, which is about 1/5 of the level of GDP per capita of India and about 1/4 of Pakistan or Nigeria today. However, skeletons from Hellenistic Greece suggest an average height of 172 cm, which is much closer to current American heights than to heights in India (165 cm) or Pakistan (165.8 cm) today. "
And the heights of Irish inductees to the British army in the 1890's was 5'4" (162.5 cm). It'd been helpful if he'd thrown in the typical heights seen in Mykenean Greece and Iron II heights in Greece as well. If I remember correctly, Iron II people were distinctly shorter, while the Mykenean heights were highly bimodal between elites and normal people.
The way I'd phrase it is that Malthusian effects don't mean the entire population is starving, it just means a variably large part of the population is desperately poor.
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"In other words, throughout Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America, most claims of ancestral kinship that assert that “we”, whoever we are living in one place, came from elsewhere are fictitious:"
Oh, that's been true for awhile. The more interesting phenomenon is when a population DOES seem to have experienced a major genetic influx, precisely because it just doesn't happen that often, and compared to the constant declarations ranging from the Classical Era to the 19th century, a change of language, every brutal conquest does not represent a big change in genetics.
"reputedly traveled to Egypt to learn at the feet of its wise men. Plato in Phaedrus even asserts that Egyptians “invented numbers and arithmetic… and, most important of all, letters,” and he seems to have been at least partially correct, as the first alphabets were improvised nearly 4,000 years ago in Egypt by Semitic speakers adapting hieroglyphics."
Uh. Pretty much everybody in the middle/late Bronze Age was developing alphabets, but alphabetic writing didn't take over from iconic styles until the Bronze Age Collapse.
"Whether historically accurate or not, the dramatic Hebrew sojourn in Egypt remains stamped on Jewish memory to this day."
As does the Mesopotamian story of the Flood, apparently derived in part from the story of a real massive flood of the Tigris that took place prior to ~2500 BCE.
"as its traditions began with the Sumerians 5,000 years ago, but within 1,000 years they were extinct, to be succeeded by a cavalcade of peoples, Akkadians, Amorites, Assyrians, Arameans and Chaldeans until Babylonia’s conquest by the Persians in the 6th century finally ended Mesopotamian independence."
... Mesopotamian origins extend back to 6000-5500 years ago, and that's without talking about all the Neolithic technological developments that originated in the upper and eastern sections of the Feertile Crescent (plus northwest Persia). Aside from that, the genetic evidence doesn't sustain that the idea that the Sumerians were extincted, merely linguistically conquered. In fact the entire picture points to the idea that the civilizational developments in Egypt, around the Indus, and in China around the Yellow & the Yangtse, were second-tier developments coming after everything happening in Mesopotamia. (Which makes sense - Mesopotamia was THE central exchange point between Eastern and Western trade routes, for a good 3000 years, if not longer.)
"This owes to the incalculable influence Egypt exerted upon both Greeks and Hebrews, who deferred to the civilization of the Nile as more ancient and wiser than their own. "
Yes. The Egyptians had a river between two deserts, so cellulose and organic fibre artefacts have endured a much longer time, and they could build monuments of stone, which have endured much more visibly than the cities of mud bricks. But all their various techne seems to have come from their east. Egypt endures but it's also kind of stagnant over the entire length of ancient history, excepting when new ideas and technologies intrude from elsewhere.
elm
ok, now i remember why i don't subscribe to the guy
Right-wing Populism Didn't Boris and Trump come close? At least the problems not that they chose too large a % to s--- on. With just a shred of feigned competence about COVID (or no COVID) Trump is re-elected.
"In the US today, the average adult male height is 175.3 cm, in India average adult male heights are 10 cm shorter, at 165 cm. However, Indian men from the upper classes are 174.4 cm tall, and less than 1 cm shorter than Americans, which suggests the difference is not genetic but nutritional. For comparison, German 17–18 year old schoolkids were reaching 175 cm just before WW2…. The Maddison dataset claims the GDP per capita of Greece two thousand years ago was about 1,300 dollars, which is about 1/5 of the level of GDP per capita of India and about 1/4 of Pakistan or Nigeria today. However, skeletons from Hellenistic Greece suggest an average height of 172 cm, which is much closer to current American heights than to heights in India (165 cm) or Pakistan (165.8 cm) today. "
And the heights of Irish inductees to the British army in the 1890's was 5'4" (162.5 cm). It'd been helpful if he'd thrown in the typical heights seen in Mykenean Greece and Iron II heights in Greece as well. If I remember correctly, Iron II people were distinctly shorter, while the Mykenean heights were highly bimodal between elites and normal people.
The way I'd phrase it is that Malthusian effects don't mean the entire population is starving, it just means a variably large part of the population is desperately poor.
---
"In other words, throughout Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America, most claims of ancestral kinship that assert that “we”, whoever we are living in one place, came from elsewhere are fictitious:"
Oh, that's been true for awhile. The more interesting phenomenon is when a population DOES seem to have experienced a major genetic influx, precisely because it just doesn't happen that often, and compared to the constant declarations ranging from the Classical Era to the 19th century, a change of language, every brutal conquest does not represent a big change in genetics.
"reputedly traveled to Egypt to learn at the feet of its wise men. Plato in Phaedrus even asserts that Egyptians “invented numbers and arithmetic… and, most important of all, letters,” and he seems to have been at least partially correct, as the first alphabets were improvised nearly 4,000 years ago in Egypt by Semitic speakers adapting hieroglyphics."
Uh. Pretty much everybody in the middle/late Bronze Age was developing alphabets, but alphabetic writing didn't take over from iconic styles until the Bronze Age Collapse.
"Whether historically accurate or not, the dramatic Hebrew sojourn in Egypt remains stamped on Jewish memory to this day."
As does the Mesopotamian story of the Flood, apparently derived in part from the story of a real massive flood of the Tigris that took place prior to ~2500 BCE.
"as its traditions began with the Sumerians 5,000 years ago, but within 1,000 years they were extinct, to be succeeded by a cavalcade of peoples, Akkadians, Amorites, Assyrians, Arameans and Chaldeans until Babylonia’s conquest by the Persians in the 6th century finally ended Mesopotamian independence."
... Mesopotamian origins extend back to 6000-5500 years ago, and that's without talking about all the Neolithic technological developments that originated in the upper and eastern sections of the Feertile Crescent (plus northwest Persia). Aside from that, the genetic evidence doesn't sustain that the idea that the Sumerians were extincted, merely linguistically conquered. In fact the entire picture points to the idea that the civilizational developments in Egypt, around the Indus, and in China around the Yellow & the Yangtse, were second-tier developments coming after everything happening in Mesopotamia. (Which makes sense - Mesopotamia was THE central exchange point between Eastern and Western trade routes, for a good 3000 years, if not longer.)
"This owes to the incalculable influence Egypt exerted upon both Greeks and Hebrews, who deferred to the civilization of the Nile as more ancient and wiser than their own. "
Yes. The Egyptians had a river between two deserts, so cellulose and organic fibre artefacts have endured a much longer time, and they could build monuments of stone, which have endured much more visibly than the cities of mud bricks. But all their various techne seems to have come from their east. Egypt endures but it's also kind of stagnant over the entire length of ancient history, excepting when new ideas and technologies intrude from elsewhere.
elm
ok, now i remember why i don't subscribe to the guy
MalÞusian?
Right-wing Populism Didn't Boris and Trump come close? At least the problems not that they chose too large a % to s--- on. With just a shred of feigned competence about COVID (or no COVID) Trump is re-elected.