some enjoyable reading for a giant from montenegro les alpes dinariques un peuple de sujets de grande taille jean claude pineau a paul delamarche b stipe bozinovic c a dynamique de l volution humaine cnrs upr rue de l amiral mouchez paris france b laboratoire de physiologie et de biom canique de l exercice musculaire ufr aps universit rennes av charles tillon cs rennes cedex france c institute of education branch office split croatie re u le septembre accept apr s r vision le juillet disponible sur internet le er septembre pr sent par yves coppens r sum cette tude porte sur l actualisation de la stature moyenne en europe contrairement aux id es re ues il appara t selon notre enqu te r alis e sur gar ons et filles g s de ans que les adolescents des alpes dinariques sont en moyenne les plus grands d europe avec une stature moyenne de cm ils se situent devant les n erlandais qui mesurent cm c est surtout la densit de sujets de tr s grande taille qui conf re la r gion des alpes dinariques sa caract ristique avec de sujets de plus de cm alors que les n erlandais n en comptent que et la france chez les filles bien que l on ne dispose pas de beaucoup d informations les adolescentes dinariques avec une stature moyenne de cm se situent juste derri re les n erlandaises pour citer cet article j c pineau et al c r biologies publi par elsevier sas pour l acad mie des sciences abstract average height of adolescents in the dinaric alps this study contributes to an update of average heights among european populations our investigation covering boys and girls aged years shows that contrary to the general belief adolescents of the dinaric alps are on average the tallest in europe with an average height of cm they are taller than dutch adolescents cm on average above all the density of very tall subjects appears to be characteristic of the dinaric alps since measure cm or more in height as opposed to only in holland and in france although our information is not complete adolescent girls in the dinaric alps with an average height of cm come a close second to girls in holland to cite this article j c pineau et al c r biologies publi par elsevier sas pour l acad mie des sciences mots cl s stature accroissement s culaire pays europ ens adolescents keywords height secular trend european country adolescent auteur correspondant adresse e mail jc pineau wanadoo fr j c pineau see front matter publi par elsevier sas pour l acad mie des sciences doi j crvi j c pineau et al c r biologies abridged english version the diachronic increase in the stature of european peoples has always been of interest to anthropologists since the s and until now scandinavians of both sexes had been the tallest europeans followed in descending order by the dutch danes norwegians and swedes with the recent enlargement of the european community it has become necessary to establish which european country has the tallest adolescents on average in montenegrin teenagers with an average height of cm had already been found to be the tallest followed by norwegians at cm since then there has been a significant increase in average heights in all european countries especially holland where the average height among adolescents increased the fastest cm in years to reach cm in however given the lack of recent data on average heights among inhabitants of the dinaric alps we carried out a study to update the information available the study was conducted among year olds boys and girls in schools in various towns in herzegovina and central dalmatia boys unlike girls are still growing in height at years of age different longitudinal studies have shown that boys on average grow by at least one centimetre between the ages of and we have therefore added one centimetre to all average heights for boys as in other european countries height is influenced by the social environment in our study lyc e pupils were found to be cm taller on average than pupils in vocational schools taking these variations into account as well as observed differences between coastal and inland communities we found that