I *think* you agreed with my point about an isolated tribe See N. African tribes for an example.

As for records of heights, this evidence is *all* suspect and should be researched, but for the more circumstantial sources (listing only male averages in my notes) you can read from the links below. After those, my visualization for is: My stepson (at 6'6") standing next to my sister (at 5'2") looks like a *big* giant. A tall African tribesman standing at 6'11" or more next to a 'short' roman (early roman empire) of 5' etc. would certainly look like a giant in much the same way.


Before I get to the links tho - the other point raised was that giants are everywhere in legend - while true, my point was that the Norse are the only ones I know of that directly claim descent from a race of half giants - men/gods that bred with giants to produce more gods and eventually their race from the god + man equation (generically speaking, yes the legends are far more complex on the relationship and natures). Also, as a disclaimer, any topic of this nature is *bound* to run into scientific racism (note the absence of the 'hamitic' terms below in my notes) which I will not enter into discussion of



For the romans, wikipedia
[en.wikipedia.org]
claims a 5'10" minimum requirement, relaxing to 5'7" at a later date.
Brief investigation revealed the majority of the army to be *not* of native roman stock at the later date...

From a site so remote from verification I'll not list it, the general thought is that roman records (which I can't locate) show that the average height of the Roman soldier was 1.48 metres (4ft 8in) in the early republic.

Here's a relatively decent reference for the height of males 1700-1900, *none* of which are over 5'10"... [delong.typepad.com]

And a much more fairly verifiable paper:
[www.uni-tuebingen.de]
The average height in ~500BC for a Roman citizen (Not necessarily Roman descent) was no more than 5'7".



Africans now...


Dinka at 5'9" average
[en.wikipedia.org]

The Sudanese or Nilotic tribes at 6'4"
[news.softpedia.com]

Various claims, the only potentially verifiable one being the Saos:
[www.stevequayle.com]
(Does the islamic equivalents of journals of conquest list them from the 9th century?)
This link also mentions the 'watusi' of the nilotic/sudanese tribes, aka the tutsi, where the avg is 6'4, and hitting 7' - 8' is considered tall like americans consider 6'4 to 6'6 or more to be 'tall'.

Silly overview (skip if you're serious on the subject)
[www.sydhav.no]

wikipedia on the tutsi/hutu origins. More interesting than the content is the links/references cited as a good launching point for further research:
[en.wikipedia.org]