Random historical wifflings...
Oct. 11th, 2007 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynI just found this article on the Mary Rose.
It's got a load of interesting things in it about Tudor life. The average height of the soldiers on the Mary Rose was 5'7" tall - 1" taller than the average WW1 Tommy, and 25% of them had no tooth decay. Pre-urbanisation it appears most people were actually taller and healthier. The industrial revolution actually made people shorter and weaker.
I'm adding this together with other bits and pieces I've read about medieval history - Terry Jones wrote a lovely book called 'Medieval Lives' which rather reiterated this point. According to that, your average medieval peasant actually had a healthier and more varied diet than someone of equivalent social standing would have done at the turn of the century.
Progress is a funny thing...
It's got a load of interesting things in it about Tudor life. The average height of the soldiers on the Mary Rose was 5'7" tall - 1" taller than the average WW1 Tommy, and 25% of them had no tooth decay. Pre-urbanisation it appears most people were actually taller and healthier. The industrial revolution actually made people shorter and weaker.
I'm adding this together with other bits and pieces I've read about medieval history - Terry Jones wrote a lovely book called 'Medieval Lives' which rather reiterated this point. According to that, your average medieval peasant actually had a healthier and more varied diet than someone of equivalent social standing would have done at the turn of the century.
Progress is a funny thing...
