Those are much better points than making out poorly nourished peasants as being quite powerful. I’ve been to a quite a few developing countries, and the typical youngish farmer often has more in common with someone who has prematurely aged (aching joints, bad back, etc) than some Bruce Lee-like compact muscular specimen.
This isn’t remotely an interesting question to me. Pair me off against a murderous 10-year-old peasant, and maybe I have a fighting chance, but I doubt it.
I’ve got 3 inches and 50 pounds on him - and 40 years, too. Haven’t been in a fight since high school.
Maybe this guy is undersized and undernourished, but his 136 lbs. are all muscle, and he is an experienced fighter, because what else did they have to do for entertainment but fight each other?
I’m running away. If he catches me, I’m probably dead.
Sure, but most of the people in this thread likely lead sedentary lives. Even a malnourished serf will be in better shape than us merely by dint of his daily labor (and it’s worth noting that rice farming causes more severe joint degeneration than other forms of manual agriculture).
I think I could win this one, once I am convinced it is for keeps and there is no other way. It would take a lot to convince me that I have to kill or be killed though. I’d expect to come out of it with bad bite marks, a gouged eye and/or broken bones. I’d wear a cup if possible.
I voted option.
DM, oops meant OP, may I please have a rapier?
Here is why. I was bullied in high school and had three sets of eyeglasses broken, one of which impaled my eyebrow. My current trifocal glasses cost a lot of money and I’d hate to lose them.
Otherwise, I am most probably toast.
Not even close, I’d destroy him. He may be younger and have the stamina of manual labor, but I’m 6’1" 225, and in excellent shape. Whatever advantage he might have from so much manual labor doesn’t account for my own training enough, including my huge mass and reach advantage, plus modern nutrition, etc.
I could see an average medival peasant probably beating an average modern day person, just because the average modern person is overweight and out of shape, but that’s about it.
Just hope you’re lucky enough to meet with Mr Average Serf. Be a lot more cautious if you happen on Mr. Average Knight. That guy is armed and has been working his ass off his whole life learning to do one thing, which is to best his opponents, using those arms (and his steed).
Even unarmed, you can spot him a mile off. He’s heavily muscled, and a bit lopsided from practicing with a lance, which is always carried on the same side.
Yeah, your odds are a lot better against the peasant. I’d still be toast, at age 56, having spent most of my life sitting in front of a computer. I wouldn’t bother fighting. I’d try a little mental gymnastics and hope to scare him off with numerology. 
Of course, he’d report me to the Church, so I’d be toast. Toast it is. What’s that burnt smell?
Why would he be lopsided? Shields don’t just carry themselves.
IOW: Cite?
“Dear sir, thou patten hath becometh unsecured.”
Then run like hell. They don’t pay me enough to fight peasants.
I’m 6’3", 225, and in pretty good athletic shape. He’s goin’ down.
It’s also hard to say if serfs were necessarily malnourished. The worst time in terms of nourishment was the early Industrial Revolution, as measured by the decrease in height and other things. Peasants were susceptible to famines and such, but when they weren’t subject to famine they might be exposed to a decently healthy diet.
A lot of it will depend on where the peasant lived, but it wouldn’t be unheard of for a peasant to eat a lot of rye bread or wheat bread, both of which have decent protein content. Plus some beans, again, decent protein. Plus a few pints of ale per day. Also of course lower nutrition (in terms of total nutrients) items like turnips, cabbage etc. The availability of eggs, fish, and other meat would vary tremendously–there were prosperous peasants relative to their peers who would have had more. There are many accounts I’ve read in the middle ages where they talk at length about “prosperous” peasants.
It’s not unlikely that in normal times a peasant was able to consume their body weight in protein per day plus a lot of carbs. Most likely they burned 3500-4000 calories per day while laboring, which only sounds like a lot to a sedentary person. I’m an atypical case because I’m a heavy weight lifter but my “maintenance” calories are around 3500 and I’m not super active. Someone like a modern swimmer or cyclist probably needs even more calories than I do, and a peasant that works most of the day would be more like them.
So what you’d have would be a guy who might only weigh 140 but it’d basically be a very high lean mass 140. The strength difference between a guy who is 140 at 10% body fat and a guy who weighs 200 at 35% body fat isn’t actually very much if the 200 pounder is also a sedentary person.
Any English peasant of that time period would have gone through some periods of famine, even before 1315. He’d have grown up during a period of lots of small wars, that’s never a good time to be a peasant, especially if he’s from anywhere Oop North.
My money would be on the experienced fighter with more intensity who isn’t squeamish about poking out the other guy’s eye. No one here is Mike Tyson, one punch isn’t going to end it.
If that’s you, and you outweigh him with a greater reach, then all the better.
Sorry, no cite, but it’s an asymmetrical exercise, which leads to asymmetrical results.
“1491” by Charles Mann makes the point that not only serfs, but most Europeans were stunted of growth and riddled by disease in the exploration and early colonial period of 1500-1700, based on their own accounts of the appearance of the “savages” contrasted with themselves. Perhaps that’s the period you mean by early industrial revolution, but I’d put that in the 1700’s, when energy from coal first exceeded energy from firewood and manpower combined.
The archaeological record shows that human health (based on longevity, bone density, height, freedom from disease and violence) decayed rapidly with the adoption of agriculture and civilization, when compared to nearby hunter-gatherers at the same time. It may have gotten worse at the beginning of the industrial revolution, but that doesn’t contradict the OP’s point that we’re bigger and better nourished than our medieval ancestors. Whether we’re stronger is, well, an interesting question.
It’s not a fair comparison, but I had a cousin who grew up on a rural farm, who was far stronger than all the athletes on the other side of the family, in terms of brute strength, despite looking scrawny in comparison (but definitely well fed). I don’t know who’d have won in a fight, though.
Regardless, I suspect living in a place where one has to fight to keep from being trodden on is the biggest factor, and I’m sure there are plenty in modern USA who do have to prepared to do serious battle on a daily basis. Not me, fortunately!
I’d challenge him to calculate the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Chicks dig that. Then I’d make off with his wimmin-folk, and leave him standing there humiliated in front of all his buddies…
Average height for males was around 5’8" in the period 900-1100, for non-nobility. It had decreased to like 5’4" by the 19th century. I’m less clear on the periods in between, but we had already adopted agriculture by then.
I suspect that for European peasants it’s highly variable based on whether they grew up during one of the many great plagues / poxes, famines, etc that swept through Europe. Actually this previous thread touching on some similar ages notes that late middle ages height was around 5’8" as well. I suspect this is because any times without relative catastrophes, peasants weren’t that bad off, but there were lots of catastrophes between 1000-1800 AD due to lack of food security.
This article talks about the early middle ages, and how men then were almost as tall on average as American males are today. The professor behind it stipulates several reasons, including:
This PDF, which if you go down to page 36 (38 of the file itself) shows some height samples throughout history. In the era 13th-14th century England average height was 171.8 cm, or roughly 5’7 1/2 inches.
I think this does call into question if your “typical” peasant in this time period would be malnourished. I think food security was higher in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the move to factories resulted in gravely poorer diet and much lower average height. So the peasants that did live to adult hood and were spared famine/plague probably were not scraggly malnourished North Korean types.
Awesome username/post combo.