The effect of living conditions on the stature of men and women: the case of south-eastern France (18th, 19th and 20th centuries)

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In this paper we analyse the impact of different living conditions on the length of the femur, as a proxy for stature, of three Mediterranean samples with known historical contexts, and assess sex differentials in femur length changes. The first collection analysed is composed of 18th century plague victims who had suffered several previous starvation episodes. The second collection, from the 19th century, lived through comparatively better times. The third is from the 20th century, when living conditions were better than during the two previous centuries. We compared the femur lengths of females and males between the three collections using Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon statistical tests. The median value of male femur lengths increased over time, as expected. However, the median values of the female sample decreased in the 19th century, while the differences between the 18th and the 20th centuries samples were not statistically significant. The samples from the 18th and 20th centuries are reliable sources, but for the 19th century collection, we have assumed a possible bias in the socio-economic representativeness of the female sample. While different trends in sexual dimorphism in stature have been observed in other studies, the non-significant difference between female femur length from the 18th and the 20th centuries is unexpected, given improvements in living conditions.