# Do Historical Records Speak of Exceptionally TALL American Slaves? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 1, 2002, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-historical-records-speak-of-exceptionally-tall-american-slaves/139783 "2002-12-01T16:41:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tsunamisurfer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@tsunamisurfer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tsunamisurfer)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2002, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-historical-records-speak-of-exceptionally-tall-american-slaves/139783/1 "2002-12-01T16:41:42Z")
This thread is inspired by my observation of startingly tall African-American (and, recently, some African) basketball players and my curiosity as to whether historical records even **mention** the phenomenon of unusually tall African-American slaves in 17th, 18th, and 19th century America. Admittedly, height is influenced by both genetic and dietary factors. From my readings, the diets of slaves ranged from poor to reasonably good, at least by prevailing standards. (Protein wasn’t scarce on many farms.) I’ll also concede that people in general, during this time period, were shorter than they are today. But still, there must have been quite a few statistical outliers. The seven-footer African-Americans of today had unusually tall ancestors. Do historical records even mention the phenomenon of unusually tall slaves? Stupid question? Yes. But I’m still curious. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d26b3c/32.png) [@UncleBill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBill)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2002, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-historical-records-speak-of-exceptionally-tall-american-slaves/139783/2 "2002-12-01T16:56:08Z")
If I recall my history, most slaves were taken from the Ivory Coast area in sub-Saharan western Africa. Manute Bol is from Sudan, in eastern Africa, which probably had a very different population. Dikembe Mutombo is from the former Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo, a little further south with a tiny coastline. Patrick Ewing is Jamaican, but I don’t know how far back that goes. Hakeem Olajuwan is Nigerian, from the interior of Africa. Not the slave countries, from what I recall. ---
**Author:** ![Earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/90db22/32.png) [@Earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earthling)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2002, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-historical-records-speak-of-exceptionally-tall-american-slaves/139783/3 "2002-12-01T17:54:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tsunamisurfer \* > **The seven-footer African-Americans of today had unusually tall ancestors.** I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. From Peter L. Bernstein, [_Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk_](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471295639/qid=1038764853/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-7737933-6944827?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), pp. 167-168: > [@](#): > > [Francis] Galton found further confirmation of regression to the mean in an experiment that he reported in 1885… > > [His] focus in this case was on height…to see how a particular attribute was passed along by heredity from parents to children. [After adjusting for the difference in height between men and women] He referred to the resulting entities as “mid-parents.” He also had to make sure that there was no systematic tendency for tall men to marry tall women and for short men to marry short women… > > The results were stunning, as the accompanying table reveals. The diagonal structure of the numbers from lower left to upper right tells us at once that taller parents had taller children and vice versa – heredity matters…Finally, compare the furthest right-hand column to the furthest left-hand column. The mid-parents with heights of 68.5 inches and up all had children whose median heights were below the height of the mid-parents; the mid-parents who were shorter than 68.5 inches all had children who tended to be taller than they were. > > The consistency of normal distributions and the appearance of regression to the mean enabled Galton to calculate the mathematics of the process, such as the rate at which the tallest parents tend to produce children that are tall relative to their peers but shorter relative to their parents. To sum up, children of tall parents tend to be taller than the population in general, but shorter than their parents – then, over several generations, the offsprings return to “normal,” and today’s basketball players are statistical aberrations. I realize the above material is a secondary source, so I’ll let our resident statisticians and geneticists jump in with their words. ---
**Author:** ![tsunamisurfer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@tsunamisurfer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tsunamisurfer)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2002, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-historical-records-speak-of-exceptionally-tall-american-slaves/139783/4 "2002-12-01T20:50:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by UncleBill \* > \*\*If I recall my history, most slaves were taken from the Ivory Coast area in sub-Saharan western Africa. Not the slave countries, from what I recall. \*\* Actually, African captives subsequently sold into bondage were taken from a broad geographic expanse as far west as present-day Guinea to as far east and south as Gabon and Congo, with the preponderance taken from the present-day Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria region. I also believe that many of the African captives were taken (whether as prisoners of war, felons, or simply through wholesale raiding parties) from deep within central sub–Saharan Africa, which ostensibly would tap into the populations of taller Africans. Perhaps, as suggested, this issue is best left to the board’s geneticists and historians.