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Re: Stephen Hawking once gave a simple answer as to whether there was a God

By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Wed, 05 Jun 24 3:29 AM | 30 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 53912 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 53910 by Zimbler0)
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Zimbler0:

Re: “So if most people back in David and Goliaths time were around four feet tall, how tall would Goliath have been?”Now that's an interesting question! I don't know the answer.

My Amazon Echo says that the battle between David and Goliath is thought to have occurred in 1020 B.C. How tall were people 3,000 years ago? As it turns out, 3,000 years ago is when Bronze started being used -- in Mesopotamia. The excerpt below says that in the Bronze age, human height was at best about what it is in the U.S. today.

Human height has changed significantly over the course of history, including in the last 5,000 years:

Preagricultural
Skeletons from Greek and Turkish preagricultural sites show that men averaged 5'9" and women averaged 5'5".

After agriculture
Around 5,000 years ago, people were shorter, averaging 5'3" for men and 5' for women.
Bronze Age
The Indus Valley Civilization had some of the tallest people in the world, with men averaging 5'9" and women averaging 5'5".
17th century
During the Little Ice Age, cold winters and conflict caused crop yields to drop, and average height in Europe reached a low point. For example, the average Frenchman was only 5'4".
Modernity
Since the late 1800s, global average height has increased steadily, peaking in the 1980s and leveling off in recent decades. For example, the average height of men born in 1996 was 5'7.5" and women was 5'3". In the US, the average height has leveled off at around 5'10".
http://tinyurl.com/2mt3n4m6
My conclusion: While I don't know the average human's height, it doesn't sound like your hobbit-human premise is holding up.

BTW, what a lousy unit of measure the cubit is!!!!! I just gotta say.

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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Stephen Hawking once gave a simple answer as to whether there was a God
By: Zimbler0 in 6TH POPE
Wed, 05 Jun 24 3:05 AM 		Msg. 53910 of 60008

Decomposed > No, Goliath may have been big, but he wasn't a ten-footer. Or 'David & Goliath' is, as I suspect, a parable created at a time when it hadn't been medically proven that people who grow to Goliath's pretended size will necessarily be fragile, weak and short-lived.


Now I'm not going to go so far as to say 'The human heart and skeletal structure cannot handle the strain'. There are gorillas, right? So a few genetic tweaks to strengthen the skeletal structure and a bigger heart more designed to pump blood better . . .

But, the 'Cubit' is NOT 18 inches. A cubit is "An ancient unit of linear measure, originally equal to the length of the forearm from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow".

So if most people back in David and Goliaths time were around four feet tall, how tall would Goliath have been?

Zim.

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