"Recent studies tried to characterize the contribution of DNA to height," said Stephanie Marciniak, assistant research professor, Penn State."We started thinking about the longstanding questions around the shift from hunting, gathering and foraging to sedentary farming and decided to look at the health affect with height as a proxy."
, indicators of stress seen in the bones and ancient DNA. They also looked at genetic indications of ancestry. The researchers reported their results in a recent issue of the"Our approach is unique in that we used height measurements and ancient DNA taken from the same individuals," said Marciniak. Drawings of skeletal indicators of non-specific stress evaluated in the study. Credit: Katharine Thompsonand 20% is from the environment," said Marciniak."Researchers haven't yet identified all the genetic variants associated with for height."
When the team incorporated ancestral information, they found that for the Neolithic, the height decrease is reduced a bit so that it is not as extreme.