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In the past few centuries of the real world, the average human height has increased, due to general improvements in medical care, nutrition and so forth. Projecting forward, how would that average have changed in 40k?

Are we likely to have increased in stature, as the trend is going at the moment, because given the apparent increase in strife/warfare, thereby selecting for strength and the size and potentially surviablity that goes along with it?

Or would we have gone the other way, what with billions of humans now living in hives, poverty stricken death worlds and so on, where malnutrition and poor living conditions, access to healthcare etc will have declined, thereby resulting in a decline in the average human stature?

Over centuries, we haven't grown that much. When I worked in Williamsburg, people used to comment "well, people were shorter then." to which I really wanted to say "then Jesus was only two foot tall."

Over thousands of years, we would change. Probably not so much by height though. The musculoskeletal system can only bear so much over a long distance. I believe we'd grow more out to the sides, as we develop stronger muscles and larger organs.

I would say that it varies world to world. You get change and variation depending on planet of origin. Catachan with its high gravity, largely muscular heavey musculo skeletal build.

Where a void dweller, or hive worker would be more likely leaner with smaller build. Especially those hivers with poor medical and nutrition.

I agree with Eetion. We wouldn't be much different, and the differences that did exist would largely be influenced by the location.

It really depends, on Hive Worlds where it's so compact you'll probably have negative growth for instance.

I'd imagine disease resistance, resistance to hormonal contraceptives and maybe sperm that eat through latex might feature

The differences will be between planets, and then the differences will usually not be super extreme.



Humans will tend to settle on planets most like earth. With a similer gravity(which is the biggest factor)

Humans that settled on planets with differing gravity have evolved into Abhumans. Ogryns and Squats were the result of their planets higher gravitational field.

Ratlings became smaller due to food shortages and size constraints IIRC.

Then various other rarer types of Abhumans are out there too.


But overall, most humans will not be so different to humans today. Some taller, some shorter, some stronger, some weaker, but overall still humans.

The question really over simplifies the IoM. Humanity is spread over a million worlds (IoM alone, there are far more human worlds that aren't in the IoM).

Each world has its own gravity, climate, atmosphere and work practices. This has lead to multiple abhuman species that evolved to their worlds.

If we look at the base line human it ranges at its physical peak at a Catachan to wirery underhivers. Even among homo sapien sapian the variety is massive. Even in one hive on one world the differences are massive, just look at the necromunda game fluff. So the question is unanswerable.

People are generally taller now because of improved diet, not genetics. A couple of thousand years is far too short a time for genetics to suddenly make people 1-2 ft taller than they used to be.

People alive in 40K will be roughly similar to the people alive today, accounting for outliers such as mutants, genetically altered humans, etc, and will generally reflect local environmental conditions in the same way it does now; poor food, increased pollution = smaller, weaker humans, good food, lots of clean fresh air = larger, stronger humans.

Etc...

Well, for one thing not everyone would be white and british.

It'd be far more likely to be either a more diverse settlement, like modern day America but with far more people of Asian descent, or you'd have different nations becoming more compartmentalized by planet, largely depending on how the next few centuries go in terms of unity. By the time the empire rolled around, humanity would either be a group of increasingly different subsets by world, or a nearly uniform race.

A handful of languages would probably be common in the first couple of millenia, most likely Chinese, English, Spanish and Hindi, but over time language may coalesce into a more uniform piece, then in the civil war period language would splinter yet again using that once-unified tongue as a base.

By the emperor's reuniting, again, language would be either one or infinitely diverse depending on how isolated the colonies were.

Each planet that was an original colony would have its own unique language. Planets that were settled by the Imperium, or totally rebuilt following war, will speak a form of Gothic.

Gothic is likely a combination of whatever languages were dominate on Earth at the time of the Unification Wars.

Given what we know about the Unification era, its probably a mixture of Eurasian languages. Given that the dominate nations were in Eurasia at the time of the Unification.

Oh good something I can talk about with some knowledge about.

Currently humans are getting taller, yes, this is due first and foremost to a change in diet. Before animal domestication we were actually much taller (average height was something like 6"+, not too sure), but following higher population density brought on by the development of agriculture and a shift to carbohydrate based diets we got a fair bit shorter.

Basically we've been clawing our way back to our pre-agriculture height due to (relatively) better dieting and a better understanding of the human body. Also we're starving less often.

It's actually quite a pronounced example of human evolution in response to altered diets over thousands of years. Genetics does play a part in it, but not to the point that it's set in stone that a 7ft basketball player is going to have 8ft children when they're adults. Though it's a little silly to say that genetics has no part to play in it, height is a phenotypical expression just like the colour of your hair is.

Anyway.

If anything people in the Imperium, barring nobility and well off planets/military forces, will probably be shorter. Due to starvation and higher population density.

38,000 years is a long time though. In the context of 40k the vast majority of the human populace was isolated from eachother for at least a few thousand. Whether that's enough time to prevent homogeneity is a stretch, likely living on so many different worlds would at least cause sort of variation in things like height, skin colour and all that jazz.

That's just speaking in purely scientific terms though, you can't really apply that to a universe where people treat machinery as some form of mysticism and a mutated arm is a bad tuesday at the office.

Gothic to me sounds like what a 15 year old thinks what Latin sounds like, really.

Thanks for the constructive replies folks. If I have simplified the question it was mainly to direct the discussion rather than imply there was no further complexity to the issue.

I suppose, despite the larger variety of human forms that IoM exhibits, and the spread of worlds and environements, I can't help but still think of humanity as a whole that can still be treated as such when thinking of these sorts of things. Maybe thats the real change in humanity in IoM, we're no longer really one entity but a conglomeration of a great many, very different and separate communities (more so than today at least). I wonder how much we would understand humans of the 40k universe?

Still, conjecture is fun eh?

I just figured Americans were so big because we eat so much bovine growth hormone.

I'm 29year old, 6' 4" and 230lbs. I haven't willingly eaten a vegetable... ever. You do not need them to become big and strong.

Also take a look around a junior highschool. Isn't it a little strange that 10-12 year old girls are sporting double ds?

My theory: Chicken breast growth hormone. A common chicken in America is 60% breast meat... when it's alive!

Animal growth hormones are incapable of effecting humans.

1) They would almost immediatly break down in the digestive tract.

2) Any that do manage to infiltrate the system(less then 100th of 1%) would simply not be compatable and the body would simply isolate the useless material and dispose of it.


This is why all the sillyness over rBST(and other hormones) is stupid.

You could drink a cup full of it and it wouldn't do anything(aside from make you want to barf)

Even taking an injection would do nothing.

The B in rBST is for Bovine. Meaning its for Cows.


The full name is Recumbant Bovine Somatitrophin(sp?)

Humans have their own Somatitrophin that is completely different from the Bovine.


To the human digestive tract. rBST is just another protien thats coming along to get broken up.



Only hormones that are identicle to human hormones are of any concern, and even then they would simply be identicle. A cows own body makes this very chemical, we are simply injecting it into the cow to prolong the lactation cycle.

Let me know when you find a growth hormone for animals that is 100% identicle to a humans.

Listen to Templar, he is a smart man.

Hormone receptors are fickle things, something that works in cows probably won't work in humans.

 DeffDred wrote:
I just figured Americans were so big because we eat so much bovine growth hormone.

I'm 29year old, 6' 4" and 230lbs. I haven't willingly eaten a vegetable... ever. You do not need them to become big and strong.

Also take a look around a junior highschool. Isn't it a little strange that 10-12 year old girls are sporting double ds?

My theory: Chicken breast growth hormone. A common chicken in America is 60% breast meat... when it's alive!

Sexual development will always begin earlier in a population that doesn't suffer malnutrution.

 DeffDred wrote:
I just figured Americans were so big because we eat so much bovine growth hormone.

I'm 29year old, 6' 4" and 230lbs. I haven't willingly eaten a vegetable... ever. You do not need them to become big and strong.

Also take a look around a junior highschool. Isn't it a little strange that 10-12 year old girls are sporting double ds?

My theory: Chicken breast growth hormone. A common chicken in America is 60% breast meat... when it's alive!

Americans aren't actually that large. Unless you're talking fatness.

We arn't much taller then Europeans or Africans.

And height has more to do with Calcium in your diet then meat products.


Americans, Europeans, and Africans have more calcium in their diet then Asians and pacific islanders.

This is because of Dairy products. Goats and Cows mostly.

Dairy is present in some areas, like India and the Steppes, but it was not common in China or Japan.


As such, people in China and Japan are noticably shorter.

When we adopted my little sister from China, I was 4. I was only about a foot shorter then the typical adult(although I was tall for my age) and my mom was easily a good 14-15" above the locals.

My sister is about 5'1" as I recal(she's now 17) so she is quite abit taller then the people back in China. Due almost exclusivly to diet.

 Grey Templar wrote:
We arn't much taller then Europeans or Africans.

And height has more to do with Calcium in your diet then meat products.


Americans, Europeans, and Africans have more calcium in their diet then Asians and pacific islanders.

This is because of Dairy products. Goats and Cows mostly.

Dairy is present in some areas, like India and the Steppes, but it was not common in China or Japan.


As such, people in China and Japan are noticably shorter.

When we adopted my little sister from China, I was 4. I was only about a foot shorter then the typical adult(although I was tall for my age) and my mom was easily a good 14-15" above the locals.

My sister is about 5'1" as I recal(she's now 17) so she is quite abit taller then the people back in China. Due almost exclusivly to diet.

It's not just calcium, it's overall dietary intake among many other things. You can't attribute height to just one factor. The Samoans are among the tallest people in the world and their diet doesn't include dairy products for the most part, that's explained by selective breeding.

Your body is quite capable of getting calcium from places other than dairy products, vegetables in particular have a lot of calcium in them depending on what you're eating. Even Seaweed does.

Consumption of dairy products is it's own interesting little thing though, with something called lactase persistence.

For humans to evolve its gonna take millions of years

Depends what you define by evolution, humans have gone through structural and biochemical changes in the past 50,000.

We will all be purple and no longer have to go to the toilet.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
I just figured Americans were so big because we eat so much bovine growth hormone.

I'm 29year old, 6' 4" and 230lbs. I haven't willingly eaten a vegetable... ever. You do not need them to become big and strong.

Also take a look around a junior highschool. Isn't it a little strange that 10-12 year old girls are sporting double ds?

My theory: Chicken breast growth hormone. A common chicken in America is 60% breast meat... when it's alive!

Americans aren't actually that large. Unless you're talking fatness.

That reminds me. Humans are one of the 5 fattest animals on Earth. America is the fattest country. Texas is the Fattest state. Huston is the fattest city.

Huston Texas makes the human race one of the 5 fattest animals on Earth.

BTW: I think Everyone takes me a little too seriously on here.