The Dutch are supposed to be the tallest.
You mean genetically? I suppose that we can say the Dutch always had the potential to be so tall, but apparently they weren't 140 years ago, according to the Maclean's article.
Yoshie, the same article says that the Japanese are supposed to be almost as tall as the people in the US. Judging from my students, that cannot be true.
The Maclean's article that I cited doesn't mention the Japanese in particular -- what it does claim is that "One intriguing new finding is that the elites of Europe, Asia and Africa now actually all stand about the same height, roughly five foot ten to six foot, according to Steckel." Japan is part of Asia, but its population gets dwarfed by China and other Asian nations combined, and you have to keep in mind that the Chinese in northern China always tended to be very tall. Concerning data of Japanese youth only, see "Table 2 Average Height, Weight and Seated Height By Age" at <http://www8.cao.go.jp/youth/english/whitepaper/2003/1-2.html>. It says that the average height of 17-year-old Japanese boys in 2002 was 170.7 cm and that of 17-year-old Japanese girls was 157.9 cm. Compared to my parents' generation, they are giants. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
