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Did Climate Change Make Humans Shorter or Taller?

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Davide Piffer
Jun 09, 2026
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There is an old model in evolutionary biology known as Bergmann’s Rule: warm-blooded animals living in colder environments tend to evolve larger body sizes to minimize their surface-area-to-volume ratio, thereby conserving metabolic heat.

When applied to human population history, this framework generates a straightforward prediction: populations in colde…

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