plate armor built for boys?

my parents when stationed in germany in the 50s visited lots of museums and castles....all the plate armor seemed to be fitted for a person under 5 feet tall ...were the knights of old really small or is it something else?

 

People on average used to be alot shorter in the olden days... Something to do with the fact that now people on average have better health nutrition and excercise habits...

 

Except the nobility got good food and exercised regularly from boyhood to train for war. The armour you saw was almost certainly for a child. Most museums (including the army museum in Brussels!) have a suit of children's armour.

 

ricky, the thing is ...all the armor they saw in all the castles and museums appeared to be childs armor or for a man mabey 5 feet tall,or less....i would expect a guy who swings a sword for a liveing to be built like a pro athelete of today ...size big or size really big

 

nope medaeval people were small

the easiest way to show this is by going through a door to a medaeval house, as you always have to duck.

and yes it was often due to nutrition and whilst the posh did have better food there food was still limited compared to today

FNG

 

I am 6 foot tall, and have been round many Medieval buildings (from Castles & Churches down to Timber-framed houses, including some that are essentially unaltered since whenever) and very rarely have had to duck. In fact, the only times I've ever needed to duck was in the smaller timber-framed houses, where the ceiling height is determined by the length of the supporting timbers, which is determined by how much money the homeowner could afford...

Yes, the average height 600 years was less than today, but not by as much as a foot. 5 foot 6 or so is a more realistic figure for the 'average' height, and there are many known cases of people who were 6 foot and over from Anglo-Saxon times and onwards.

 

In Melbourne there is Captain Cook's Cottage, (the guy who discovered Australia) transported brick by brick from England and restored to just as it was in 1788... I'm 5'11 and I whack my head on the doorframe when I enter

 

There is a French Colonial fort (early 1700's) here in Mobile and the doors are short and narrow. Ceilings are low as well.

It's actually a replica of the original fort which was demolished in the early 1800's when it was determined that the fort was no longer needed. The bricks were used to build houses.

 

I was at a museum which contained American Civil War uniforms.I found them to be extremely small as well.

 

Once i entered an early medieval church and in order to get inside i almost had to kneel. Of course, this had nothing to do with people's height. The door was made this way in order to force people kneel when entering.

 

Better exercise habits !!!

You seriously think that the MTV/Playstation/TV/Automobile/Jet Age/Supermarket/Mail Order etc etc etc generation have better exercise habits than hard pressed medieval types whos' simplest, most basic daily tasks would be seen as damn hard work by most people today.

 

there is this article on the net

http://historymedren.about.com/b/a/112443.htm

how tall was the armour? To be honest it could be a boys armour. The simple fact is that armour costs a lot of money, especially plate. So the only people generally wearing it are nobles who are the sort of people to get their 12 to 14 year old a suit to wear

FNG

 

only a small proportion of the world have access to those technologies, and in those areas poor health conditions like obesity is increasing... But in MOST of the world, playstations are not widespread enough to cause general laziness (yet) and whatever kids do thesedays is better than the mediaeval tradition of hunching over a plough all day....

 

Many in the Third World ARE living a medieval existance - but that was not your point.

 

That means didly squat the Indians had to duck to get into their homes(tipees) but it wasnt because there were short. If someone has to duck while entering it puts them at a disadvantage if they wish to fight.

You could also make a case for genetics in the fact that people in a certain families stay at or near the same height, or the height of their parents. I know that is a fact at least in my family which really dosent make it a proof but you cant put it all on nutritian as there are many people in the world that starve their whole lives but are still generally tall.

 

have any of you seen a suit of armor that would fit a man of 5.5 or 6 feet tall that dates back to medevel times ?was all the armor my folks saw built for the preteen sons of noblemen ..surely there must be some adult size armor somewhere.....

 

Yes, many times in many museums.

One thing to remember is that the suits of armour that survive tend to be the 'ceremonial' ones, or tournament armour, rather than those that were used in battle.

 

In Styria state arsenal ( Graz Austria) you can see around 10.000 suits of armour from 16 and 17 th century. It is interesting that they are made for average height of a soldier of approx.160cm.

Couses for such interesting informations about height of poeple at the time can be interpreted with:
- Diet,
- enviromental couses (larger amount of UV radiation that prevents growth),

Odd "basketball player" found here and there can be explained by DNA inheritance (9 all ancient civilisatins have legends of race of giants) or simply by medical problems of particular individual. AFAIK in Canterbury abbey they found a grave of a man who was more than 2m tall. Can you imagine him i full armour charging you in times when average haight was around 160cm?

 

Putting armour in castles is an invented tradition of the 19th century. It is possible that the armour you saw in castles was put there later, and was never made to be actually worn.

I agree that the size of uniforms particularly in the Early Modern period is not impressive. However, it must be considered that the grunts of this period (as opposed to the nobility) would rarely eat anything other than bread, and rarely drink anything without alcohol in it. This is of course a laughably narrow diet that is bound to keep the average height low and the average age of death at around 55.

Famously, the Prussian king Frederick William II liked tall soldiers so much that he assembled a whole regiment manned entirely by men over 6 foot. He recieved some of these recruits all the way from Russia as a present from the Tsar; this may indicate how rare these tall men really were.

 

If you read the artice FNG posted it states that the avarage height over the last 800 years was at its lowest in the Early Modern Period.