Some people are taller than normal people, possibly due to rare diseases or genetic factors combined with diet.
Robert Wadlow, the tallest person in history, was 2.72 m tall before his death at the age of 22 in 1940, according to Guinness World Records. Wadlow surpasses the current average height of men in the US, which is 1.75 m. However, like most real-life giants, his large size is the result of a medical syndrome, according to Live Science. “The majority of giant patients have growth hormone problems,” said Márta Korbonits, professor of endocrinology at Queen Mary University of London. “That’s what Robert Wadlow got wrong.”
Korbonits emphasized that the leading cause of gigantism is increased levels of growth hormone produced by the pituitary gland in the brain. Most of the time, such high hormone levels are caused by a benign tumor. Most likely we won’t see another person as tall as Wadlow anymore because doctors today can remove tumors and use drugs to stop the growth process because gigantism and tumors can threaten health. human health.
Other conditions that can make people unusually tall include Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that can cause bones to grow longer. However, some people possess extremely high heights without any medical syndrome, including the previous tallest person in the world, Bao Xishun (2.36 m). They may possess a range of genetic variations that influence their tall stature. Although it is easier for researchers to study giants living in modern times, tall people have certainly always existed. The oldest case of gigantism comes from the remains of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who was 1.87 m tall.
Korbonits’ research found that many tall Irish people in real life inherited a genetic mutation from a person who lived 2,500 years ago. Genetics combined with environmental factors such as early life diet contribute to determining height. Populations often become taller over time with the advancement of civilization.
Pavel Grasgruber, a researcher at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, said some male remains from the final stage of the Gravettian culture, which specialized in hunting mammoths from about 29,000 years ago, stand out with different heights. often, may even inspire legends of giants. The tallest of the seven skeletons unearthed in the Grimaldi cave system in Italy in the early 20th century, has an estimated size of 1.96 m. Meanwhile, the standard height for men in Europe at that time was less than 170 cm.
Researchers do not know whether the tall remains represent the Gravettian population or not. However, tall men were common in early Late Paleolithic populations in France and Moravia (present-day Czech Republic). They grew to heights that modern industrial nations did not reach until the mid-20th century. According to Grasgruber, the reason for the tall physical features of early Late Paleolithic hunters was low population density and an abundance of mammoths and many other large mammals.