We know of only three species of pre-historic mammals that managed to cross the Atlantic ocean between Africa and South-America. One of them was the now extinct Ucayalipithecus monkey about 35 million years ago. The other species of “immigrant” mammals were New World Monkeys, flat-nosed primates that are found in south and central America today. […]
Nearly 4,000 common variations in DNA are known to affect stature. Each variant nudges your height up, or down, with one millimeter or so. But now researchers have identified the single largest genetic contributor to human height known to date. The sensational findings of the effects of the previously unknown variant (E1297G) of the FBN1 […]
It’s interesting to listen to Malcolm Gladwell deconstruct the presumptions behind the story of David and Goliath. Rather than presenting it as one of our best known underdog stories he suggests that Goliath in fact never stood a chance. According to Gladwell this was never a fight between a very tall and mighty warrior and […]
The Austrian economist and political scientist Leopold Kohr opposed the “cult of bigness” in social organization. He inspired the movement for a human scale and the Small Is Beautiful movement. His most influential work was The Breakdown of Nations. In 1983, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award. In the series Kohrisms we want to give attention to some of […]
The Zooms are modest symbolic gestures intended to initiate an embodied practise of the desire for smaller. Although they are often hardly more than physical whispers these actions attempt to overcome the inability to act in the face of the omnipresent desire for BIG. They are not very good and they’re not spectacular. They just […]
Short-statured people, dwarfs and people with achondroplasia play a significant role in Maya mythology. It was believed that dwarfs lived together with the gods before humans existed. Because of this presumed divine proximity and their intimacy with the unknown, small-statured people were highly regarded. Dwarfs had elevated social roles that were steeped in cosmology and […]
When John Chayka, general manager of the Arizona Coyotes of the National Hockey League, used his seventh-overall draft selection to pluck talented centre Clayton Keller, he was sold on the teen’s playmaking ability and his knack for creating time and space. At 177cm and 77 kg, Keller was the smallest in stature among the first-rounders and one of […]
The human brain is generally regarded as the organ that makes us stand out from all other forms of life. People have unusually large brains in relation to the size of the body: About 3x larger than that of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. And since the brain consumes a lot of energy, up […]
Greater height in humans is commonly associated with advantages such as leadership skills, wealth, intelligence or social status. Differences between short and tall men are often found for these traits, mainly in favour of tall men. But are height-related effects biologically determined or do they result from socially-driven mechanisms? A recent study of the University […]