Grave reveals secret of long life

Dozens of graves were excavated

Bones dating back to the Ninth Century suggest that taller people have always tended to live longer than their shorter contemporaries.

Researchers from Bristol University found that the shorter the adult bones found in the grave, the more likely the person was to have had a shortened lifespan.

It is certainly the case now that taller people tend to live longer - their height is a sign that they are likely to have been better nourished in childhood, and be free from disease.

Short bones, it would appear, have always been a marker or a short life

Research study

However, patterns of disease are vastly different now to those in previous centuries.

Before the 19th Century, the main causes of death were infection, malnutrition, accidents and childbirth.

The team excavated 490 sets of adult skeletal remains from St Peter's church in Barton-on-Humber in north Lincolnshire.

These dated from the mid 1800s right back to the Ninth Century AD.

The lengths of bones such as the femur, tibia and fibula, which are all indicative of total height were measured to the millimetre.

As the centuries passed, on average the bones increased in length.

The length of the radius - a bone in the arm - increased by roughly 0.2cm every 200 years.

Death before 30

The age of the person at death was calculated by looking for subtle changes in the arrangement of the pubic bones.

They found that 55% of the men, and 73% of the women died before the age of 45 - and 39% of the men, and 56% of the women had not reached 30 years of age.

Almost universally, as bone length increased, the risk of that person having died before 30 decreased.

Longer-boned, and by implication, taller, people tended to be more durable.

It suggests that health and nutrition in childhood are, and remain key factors in determining health for a lifetime.

The researchers pointed out that being short may well have increased the risk, for women, of dying in childbirth.

However, they added: "Short bones, it would appear, have always been a marker or a short life."

The research is published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.