Ecstasy said:
I never looked up the average height from that time but I highly doubt that nutrition improved THAT much to make the average go up that much. Maybe a big chunk of the poor peasants had shit height but Napoleon belonged to the higher class of people so I would compare him other nobles, military members and higher families.
In France, people are much higher now than they were in the past. It's very easy to see because here, we have a lot of very old fortified cities and villages who were designed by and for small individuals. Which means when you visit such old houses, castles, etc, door frames, corridors and ceilings are very low. In old houses, ceiling is at 180 cms, in new houses, it's 230 cms.
In 1900, the height of a french man was 166 cms, and a french foid was 154 cms.
Nowadays, we are at 178 cms for men and 164 cms for foids.
We grew 12 cms on average in a mere century.
Reasons are : putting in place a medical insurance system for all, greatly improving the variety and quality of what we eat, less physically very hard jobs to do, and above all, we've become richer than any generation of french before. All this leads to people not to be sent in the coal mines at age 12, and studying instead.
About Napoleon himself, he was a corsican, an island south of the Riviera, where people are smaller than the average french. In fact, this island became a part of France very recently. So, he was unusual on many ways, and made many things possible (like invading the whole Europe).
en.wikipedia.org
