How tall were medieval knights?

[Dmitry]

When I was just a lad of 10 or 11, growing up in the old USSR, I visited the Lenin Museum in Ulyanovsk. Exhibited was the coat that Lenin wore when he was shot [poorly] by Fanni Kaplan. Even then it struck me how tiny it was. Man was a midget.

[A Senefelder]

For the calves, I wonder if they are thin because they are being held on it part by the springiness of the metal, as opposed to slapping around as the wearer walked.

Having seen a number of these greaves up close, they're really thin. I've made a fair number of them over the years and one thing that has to be taken into account when building them is that the calf cannot be an absolute contour of the wearers calf when standing since in a full crouch the calf expands considerably out to either side due to downward presure/compression from the thigh above and the greave must allow room for this. That being said the period greaves from fine harness i've seen are still very slim, often seemingly slightly abnormally so.

You'd think, given the mucking great weapons they were swinging, they would have rather large chests.

Based on the original weapons i've owned over the years weight is not an overidding factor. They've been quite light and user friendly, most swords comming in at the 1.75 to 2.75 pound range. I visited with Lee Jones this past weekend and he was kind enough to let me handle an excellent munitions zweihander he owns which I suspect came in at the 4.5 pound range but was still easilly controlable in the single hand. I swing hammer for a living making armour and it has manifested inteself not in my chest but in my arms, specifically my right arm which is noticibly bigger than my left. I suspect that weapons practice would have yielded a fit individual rather than a big one but this is of course nothing more than my supposition.

[RDGAC]

As has been noted, diet and lifestyle overall had (and still have) a lot to do with stature; this was also true of disease; serious illness was liable to have much more pronounced effects on human bodies in an era with little medical knowledge and almost no provision of useful medical care for the afflicted. One recalls, to echo the sentiment of kahnjar1, the grim revelation that, during the 2nd Boer War, recruits from Manchester - then probably the most industrialised city in the world, and almost all of it dedicated to the support of the cotton manufacturing trade - were the shortest, sickliest men available to the British Army; the rejection rate was exceptionally high, and I seem to remember figures as high as 90% being mentioned. These men tended to suffer from any number of maladies, including malnutrition, rickets, bisinosis, black lung... the list goes on and on. All of them endured poor diets, damaging housing and atrocious working conditions.

Even the upper classes, despite their generally superior lifestyle, were not immune. To take another 19th-Century example, Capt. Lawrence Oates (of Scott fame), whose mess waistcoat is preserved in our collection, really must have been rather lacking in stature. That garment would hardly fit me, and I'm not exactly hefty.

As an aside, a friend of mine who has been working out incessantly since he was around 15 (and is an accomplished martial artist, and all round great bloke to boot) is, despite his good diet etc, around 5ft 9in. His brother is around 6ft 1in, having not been quite such a fitness fanatic. Perhaps constant hard exercise, especially in the important youthful growth period, stunts one somewhat.

[fearn]

Thanks for the information on the greaves. Oddly, I'm still a bit puzzled about the chest, but whatever. I guess core muscles and shoulders do the job.

As for hard work stunting a body, I can make the opposite case. I'm rather large, and I've always had trouble doing martial arts things that smaller people could do easily. What was getting me was the square-cube proportionality law. My wrists and ankles (and other major joints) aren't a lot larger than those of someone who is a foot shorter than I am (the square: joint surface area), but I weigh a lot more (the cube: weight). As a result, I stress my joints a lot harder when I move than does someone who is shorter and lighter.

That's why a gymnast throwing a couple of flips isn't nearly as impressive as a football player doing the same move. The gymnast isn't as close to blowing her joints as the big guy is. I've seen some (ex)football players do some pretty impressive moves given their size, and they have my respect.

Does working hard stunt growth? Probably. But at the same time, a smaller person may be more comfortable with the moves of a martial artist, causing them to stick with the practice where someone who is bigger has to endure more stress injuries.

My tuppence,

F

edit P.S.: I mean American football, not real football.

[pallas]

id heard that the norse and swedes of the viking age were decently purportioned fellows

[fernando]

Originally Posted by pallas

... I heard that the norse and swedes of the viking age were decently porportioned fellows ...

Going a bit backwards, the Lusitanians, probably the most typical pre-Roman warrior race group who inhabited part of what would be Portugal, were rather thick and small.
On the other hand Germans were consensualy rather tall ... eventually much taller than Romans.
Can't it be assumed that, the variable height of individuals, departs from the relative pattern of the different peoples/races stature?
That is, besides the fact that a good diet and heavy training strenghtens and stretches limbs and even body dimensions, a well fed and exhaustively trained nobleman from Lusitanian origins produces a knight not so tall as a German could be.
... Generaly speaking .

[KuKulzA28]

I don't know if I can add anything valuable here... but here goes...

from what I know, a large factor is both the traits one is born with, and diet/lifestyle

Take for example the frontier of 1500-1800 Taiwan. The Han (Chinese) settlers were generally short, lean, tough folks. It was the "Wild Wild East" and the settlers were often pirates, farmers, or fighters. Violence was common place. But the lifestyle of the Chinese at that time was full of hardship. Unsanitary, crowded towns encouraged diseases. Lean, sometimes protein-deficient, diets caused many to be shorter or skinnier than they could be. The social structure made it so that most did not have access to quality nutrition even if the capability of creating it was there. Lots of arable land was used to make rice, tea, sugarcane, etc., much of it for export. Families had as many children as they could afford to raise, a common trend in farming families.

The aboriginal people of the Taiwanese plains (Ping Pu) were said to be taller, athletic, and well-built. They married later in life and had fewer children. Headhunting was common and in some groups one had to bring back an enemy head before being allowed to marry or receive tattoos which signified bravery and manhood. They had slash-and-burn agriculture of sustenance and hunted deer. Until severe marginalization by Han settlers, they ate pretty good. They generally had smaller populations, but had happier and healthier lives. However, look at the Taiwanese aborigines of the mountains. Here descriptions change. They are still described as athletic, well-built men... but they are shorter. Game is a bit less plentiful in the mountainous jungles and agriculture was harder in some areas with their level of agricultural technology.

If Taiwanese aborigines, Filipinos, Indonesians, etc. all come from the Austronesian gene pool... why are some short and others tall? Pingpu were taller... and Samoans have the stereotype of having a lot of muscular potential. Yet Filipinos and Indonesians are said to be shorter... I think not only do natural traits have to do with it, but diet and lifestyle do as well.

Parallels can be seen in Native America where the Peruvians in the Andes were said to be a shorter people... the Aztecs too were short people (intensely agricultural and under strict hierarchy). However the Iroquois/Haudensosaunee were said to have been somewhat tall and athletic. Some colonists compared them to Spartans. They had a mix of hunting/gathering and agriculture for food production. They lived in smaller numbers than the city-building Aztecs and Incas... but thanks to settled agriculture they had larger populations than their Algonquin rivals (who later adopted it).

And take the Celts of Europe for instance. They were said to have been tall men. Romans and Greeks described them as animal-like barbarians. Archeological and textual evidence points to the possibility that Celts were the fathers of several military inventions as well as pants and soap. They did not live in as dense cities as Romans and Greeks, had a hierarchy, but not one that prevented the commoner from being able to procure some protein. (As far as we know.) BUT BUT BUT... I remember reading that some of the Celts in the Alpine mountains had less access to certain important nutritions. Therefore many of them were shorter and malnourished than their other Celtic cousins. That didn't stop the Boii and the Helvetti from being fearsome warriors back in day....

I am Taiwanese but born in America. Despite having a light build, I am 5'10". In the USA, it's nothing to brag about. But 177.8 cm in Taiwan is decent height.