I was going to cite the information tidbit that was in the margins of one of my elementary school textbooks that said, ‘children will grow up to be one inch taller than their same sex parent’. This may have been true at the time the text book was published, but largely North American height increases have leveled off.
Height science is complex. Here is a New Yorker article that gives a feel for the field. There have been increases and decreases in the average height of different societies throughout history. While North Americans have leveled off, northern Europeans have become some of the tallest people in the world. Especially the Netherlands. Although the field is complex, generally the more healthy a whole society is, the taller the inhabitants will be.
That inch increase noted in that elementary textbook was possibly because of immunizations and antibiotics. Notice that antibiotics aren’t as effective as they once were and various movements have excluded more children from immunization in North America. So maybe the health of the society theory has some legs.
Where will improvements in health stop? There seems to be no end to the things that The Doctors and Dr. Oz can tell us to improve our health. I make the supposition that some societies will become healthier than the Dutch are now and thus average heights will continue an almost dizzying climb.
The first obvious sign of this will be when basketball stops being an exciting professional game and gets downgraded to an amateur sport. When everyone playing can do a slam dunk it won’t be nearly as exciting. And what happens when arms become so long they can reach the net from the foul line? What a boring game to watch.
Houses will have to be abandoned for being too small. Perhaps we’ll build giant houses and give our pets and children the old houses as a play area.
Remember that playground taunt to the tall? “How’s the weather up there?” Well we know from windmills that the higher up you are, generally the windier it is. Maybe we’ll all stoop to avoid the wind.
It would be a challenge for a human heart to pump blood to extremities if we become as tall as giraffes. Thus humanity would evolve into having a relay of hearts getting our blood going where it needs to. With many hearts, when we say we give our heart away, it just wouldn’t have the import that present day humans attach to it.
And of course with humans enlarging, our vocal cords would also lengthen and thus our voices would become lower pitched. Eventually, women and children would sound like Barry White. Men’s voices would become subsonic. Indeed you would have to kick men in the balls to make their voices rise 4 octaves so you could hear what they are trying to say. Kicking men in the balls could become a token of friendliness because you want to hear them out.
