With the rapid development of China's economy, the days of our Chinese people are getting better and better, the nutrition of children has kept up, naturally the longer and higher, according to the information released by the State Council in 2015, the average height of adult men over 18 years old in China is 167.1cm, and the adult women are 155 .8cm. Over the next few years, this figure continued to rise.
I believe that in the inherent impression of most people, it is always felt that ancient people lack nutrition, poor living conditions, and must be shorter than modern people, but with the excavation of a site in Shandong Province 33 years ago, this cognition was completely broken, and the height of primitive people was far more than that of modern people. Let's move on.
In 1987, experts discovered the ruins near Jiaojia Village, preliminarily judged to be the remains of the Shang Dynasty and Han Dynasty, and as a result, with the deepening of the excavation work, the experts realized that they underestimated the site, according to the first excavated cultural relics, they are dated from about 5300 to 4600 years ago, which belongs to the ancient remains of the Dawenkou culture (Chinese Neolithic Age).
Because the Jiaojia site is too large, before and after the cumulative excavation of 30 years, the expert team have changed several batches, and finally excavated a total of more than 100 housing sites, more than 200 tombs, and from the funerary products, as early as 5,000 years ago in the primitive society, there has been a "hierarchical division", because some remains enjoy a coffin, and attached a large number of jade, pottery, a look is "superior".
Compared with the "superior people", the remains in the Southern District are much more miserable, not only do they have no coffins, they do not even have funerary items, but fortunately their bones are basically preserved. Experts quickly restored the bones, and as a result they had a surprising discovery - the tallest of these remains reached 1 meter 91, the shortest one was more than 1 meter 6, the average was 1 meter 8, the ancients were so tall? And were people living in the Neolithic era?
Due to the lack of historical records of primitive humans, the author will next analyze why the height of the ancients was higher than that of modern people based on the description of the height of the ancients in the Qin and Han dynasties.
The Book of Han records that Xiang Yu is 8 feet tall, according to the Han Dynasty one foot 0.23 meters to calculate, Xiang Yu's height is 1 meter 84, the same reason Zhuge Liang, Zhao Yun, Liu Biao are 1 meter 84, Liu Bei is slightly shorter, 7 feet 8, but also close to 1 meter 8, from which it can be seen that the Han Dynasty people are still quite tall.
Looking at the height calculation table of the people in the Northern Wei Dynasty, their total average height reached 167.4 centimeters, and the average height of ancient men in the world at that time was between 1 meter 6 and 1 meter 65, which shows that the average height of men in ancient China even exceeded that of men from contemporaries.
Through the research of experts, they said that the climate of the earth at that time was warmer and wetter than now, which was conducive to the cultivation and raising of livestock (dogs, pigs and other funerary products were found in the Jiaojia site), which shows that people's lives were quite good at that time, there was no shortage of meat to eat, and nutrition must be able to keep up. On the other hand, we modern people often eat takeaway and breathe bad air, so compared to this, we are indeed inferior to the ancients.
Secondly, the ancients exercised a lot. This point must not need to be said by the author, for the ancients, hunting is a common thing, absolutely not stay at home, sitting still in the office all day; finally, there is a genetic problem, the Jiaojia site is located in Shandong Province, as far as the Chinese region is concerned, the height of the northerners is indeed higher than that of the southerners.
It can be seen that the statement that "the ancients were shorter than modern people" is not only untenable, but even has to be said the other way around, which is really surprising.
References: Book of Han, Records of History