Little People

[derien]

I got started on this because of bravecows poll of what distracts people...

Homo floresiensis - the new hobbits of the Flores island in Indonesia ("The original skeleton, a female, stood at just 1 meter (3.3 feet) tall," - average height perhaps not yet determined?).  That article says, "Modern pygmies are considerably taller at about 1.4 to 1.5 meters (4.6 to nearly 5 feet) tall."  Is that with modern nutrition?  I'd have hardly thought 5 feet would have been considered exceptionally short. 

The forgotten Australian pygmies("adult males were only about 140 centimeters (four feet six inches) tall.")

Bushmen of the Kalahari (average height 4'10")

I'm not a very good researcher - it was difficult for me to find a reference to how tall the Montaignard (Hmong) tribes from Vietnam are, but eventually I found this mention of "around 5 feet" here: Review of "The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures." 

I only knew to keep looking because one of the teachers at my high school did a slide show of pictures from when he was a Special Forces photographer in the Vietnam war working with a Hmong guy.  There were pictures of them side by side and he made it a point to say this guy was of average height for his tribe.  He only came up to the teacher's shoulder, and the teacher was maybe 5'8", I think. 

I had a cousin (she's long since lost touch with our family, now),  who was adopted, from Vietnam.  She was barely over 5', I think, but if you saw her in a photo with nothing to compare her against you'd have thought she was tall - she had a build like a lanky model. 

Comments

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

I'd have hardly thought 5 feet would have been considered exceptionally short.

Well, if that was the tallest you got, I guess you could consider that pretty short. um.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Oh I so totally freakin' LOVE that icon you've got there. *grin!*

It's just that I've met so damn many people who were below five feet tall, it just doesn't seem unusual to me. And it seems as if it would only take a few people who, by breeding, by luck, by brains - whatever - begin to dominate the gene pool in an isolated area, for the characteristics of the people in that area become very defined. Human variety is really amazing. As you learn if you work with the public. There used to be a guy who regularly came into the store I worked at who had a face like a Star Trek alien (kind of like Odo with the weirdly smooth forehead-into-nose thing) and his thumbs didn't seem to be articulated properly (the looked like fingers set on the sides of his hand, from what I could see, but he always wore his sleeves down over them). Of course, he could have been a mutant-freak one of a kind. And he could have been an alien, how can I know? ;)

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

Me too! *<3s new icon quietly*

It's just that I've met so damn many people who were below five feet tall, it just doesn't seem unusual to me.

It isn't to me either. But oh well, them scientists probably know best.

Of course, he could have been a mutant-freak one of a kind.

"Who are the mutants? We are all the mutants."

[eor.livejournal.com]

*sings*

"We are the drift, we are the mutants.
We are the ones who just appear one day,
and start reproducing."

[derien.livejournal.com]

"Who are the mutants? We are all the mutants."

Okay...Is it from the X-Men movies?

But, yeah, we are. I feel bad when someone feels they have to hide their interesting thumbs under their sleeves - I like to see human variation.

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

'S from Mutants: On The Forms, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi, which is a very cool book.

[derien.livejournal.com]

That looked like a very cool book when I read the review of it. I should try to remember to go to the library and see if I can get it on interlibrary loan.

I'll just give up on reading all the books I've got in my to-read stack, and read the ones my friends are reading, instead. That way I can be 'in.'

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

No, what you gots to do is to make your friends read the books you're reading. Then they can be in!

[derien.livejournal.com]

hee! <3!

(I'm big with the <3s today.)