by Felonius_Monk » Sat Nov 18, 2006 8:07 pm
Oh, and out of interest, there's considered to be little or no difference genetically between populations of humans in terms of height. There IS a genetic component to height but apparently, whilst there's a lot of individual-to-individual variation, there isn't much between different ethnic groups (there obviously IS truth to this idea in very small groups, e.g. some african tribes are abnormally tall or short on average, but they likely have a very small genepool shared among the group, whereas an entire race, like "black" or "white" will be genetically far, far more diverse).
You'll notice that most oriental folks in the USA under the age of 40 (i.e. who've most likely been born and lived there all their lives) are basically the same height on average as black people and caucasians. Walk into your local high school/college and you'll notice that the kids of different racial groups don't especially fall into any obvious patterns in terms of height. Poor health/diet tends to be a major factor in terms of the average height in a POPULATION - for example, average height in North Korea is much lower than that in South Korea, because diet and health is much worse.
The Monkman J[c]
"Informer, you no say daddy me snow me Ill go blame,
A licky boom boom down.
Detective mon said daddy me snow me stab someone down the lane,
A licky boom boom down." - Snow, 1993