According to a new study, when our forefathers switched from foraging to farming 12,000 years ago, they became shorter.

An international team of experts analyzed DNA and measured skeletal remains from 167 ancient people from across Europe.

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The bones have already been dated to roughly 12,000 years ago, either before, after, or around the period when farming began in Europe.

The experts discovered that switching from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming crops reduced people’s height by 1.5 inches on average.

They claim that being shorter indicates bad health since it indicates they were not obtaining enough calories to promote appropriate growth.

These early European farmers were most likely stunted by “poorer nutrition and greater disease burdens.”

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‘Lordotic hyperostosis,’ which is defined by patches of spongy or porous bone tissue in the skull, is another skeletal ‘stressor’ that the farmers may have encountered.

Stephanie Marciniak, an assistant research professor in the Department of Anthropology at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, led the new research.

Professor Marciniak added that while previous research has attempted to determine the effect of DNA on height, her new study incorporated measurements of ancient individuals’ bones as well as genetic contributions.

‘We started thinking about the longstanding questions around the shift from hunting, gathering, and foraging to sedentary farming and decided to look at the health affect with height as a proxy,’ she stated.

‘Our approach is unique in that we used height measurements and ancient DNA taken from the same individuals.’

The transition from a hunting, gathering, and foraging lifestyle to a settled agricultural lifestyle did not happen all at once across Europe, but at different times in different areas.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, farming economies were gradually adopted in Europe beginning around 9,000 years ago in Greece. However, places farther west, such as Britain, were not influenced for another 2,000 years, and Scandinavian areas were not touched until even later.

The researchers looked at the remains of 167 people — 67 girls and 100 men – who were discovered over Europe.

All of the people lived between 38,000 and 2,400 years ago, which means they lived both before and after humans began cultivating their own crops around 12,000 years ago.

The UK, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Italy, France, Ireland, Scotland, Bulgaria, and the Netherlands all discovered remains.

Pre-agricultural people (those who had to hunt and forage), early farmers, and later farmers were all included in the study.

The researchers chose long bones from skeletal remains that were being sampled or had already been sampled by other researchers for ancient DNA testing.

Even if the bones were shattered, the team was able to estimate an individual’s overall height by determining what area of the body they came from and measuring them.

The researchers then developed a model based on adult height, bone stress indicators, ancient DNA, and genetic ancestry clues.

They discovered that Neolithic individuals were 1.5 inches shorter than preceding individuals and 0.87 inches shorter than following individuals between 7,100 and 3,500 years ago, when physical changes due by cultivation across Europe would have been visible.

In comparison to Neolithic heights, they discovered that heights continuously climbed during the Copper (0.77 inch), Bronze (1.06 inch), and Iron (1.29 inch) periods.

When the scientists took into account genetic heritage variance, however, the results were tainted.

Some of the people may have been taller not because of their surroundings, such as their working conditions, but because they inherited their height from their forebears.

According to the study’s authors, genetic makeup accounts for 80% of height, while the environment accounts for 20%.

Professor Marciniak stated, “There was movement of people, primarily from east to west.” ‘We wanted to account for that movement, which may have brought with it differing proportions of height-related genetic variations,’ said the researcher.

When the researchers integrated ancestral data, they discovered that the height decline was mitigated slightly, but that the height drop around the start of the farming era was still visible.

‘Nutritional inadequacy (due to less diverse meals compared to hunters, gatherers, and foragers) and increased pathogen loads due to higher human population densities, sedentary lifestyles, and proximity to animals are potential possibilities,’ Professor Marciniak said.

Professor Marciniak believes that future research should include larger datasets, given that the study only included 167 people.

‘Our work captures a moment in time that is both dynamic and subtle,’ she explained.

‘We need to do more to see what is the cause of the decrease in achieved height versus predicted genetic height during the shift to farming.’

According to the researchers, their method is applicable to studies of previous human health and could be used in other situations.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences publication.