We did not expect this size from the first European farmers

Around 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers began to adopt a sedentary lifestyle and practiceAgriculture in the fertile crescent. This transition has had consequences on human culture, on its biology as well as on its health. The beginning of agriculture, for example, is supposed to have increased the selective value individuals, which depends on their survival and fertility. The human remains indicate that the beginning of agriculture also generated significant population growth but also a decrease in people’s state of health.

These would indeed have suffered from nutritional deficiencies and development of organizations pathogens would have been favored by the higher population densities, sedentary lifestyle and proximity to livestock. The health problems of early farmers are difficult to assess from human remains, but certain skeletal indices such as stature provide clues as to people’s health. A research team therefore looked at the height of the first European farmers and farmers to determine whether their state of health had changed following the adoption of their new lifestyle habits. The results of this study were published in the newspaper PNAS.

Small farmers?

The authors analyzed osteological data as well as sequences DNA of 167 Europeans who lived between Upper Paleolithic (about 38,000 years ago) and the Iron Age (about 2,400 years ago).

Certain bone and dental lesions attest to infections or periods of malnutrition that took place during the individuals’ childhood. The estimation of the stature of individuals makes it possible to determine what was the state of health of an individual during his development and his growth. This was done by measuring the long bones such as the radius, humerus, femur, and tibia. In addition, the authors point out that the size of human beings is a heritable trait at about 80%. Consideration of factors genetic is therefore essential in order to complete the size estimates obtained with osteological data.

The authors thus determined that humans of the pre-Neolithic period were about 4 centimeters taller than the first farmers of the Neolithic (women = 155.06 ± 5.7 cm; men = 166.16 ± 5.82 cm). The latter were also 2 to 5 centimeters smaller than humans who lived after the Neolithic. Those of the Copper Age were on average 2 centimeters taller than Neolithic farmers, those of thebronze age 2.70 centimeters more and those of the Iron Age 3.3 centimeters more. The increase in the average height of humans after the Neolithic could be explained by the introduction ofalleles from Western European peoples, such as the Yamnaya who were nomadic herders from the steppes.