This is illustrated in the following charts which show the year-on-year relative change in average male and female heights by region. People were much shorter on average 2,000 years ago. Homo Heidelbergensis lived in Europe and Africa between 700,000 and 200,000 years ago; males stood at an average of 5 feet 9 inches, while females were shorter, with an average height of 5 feet 2 inches. The exact average is not know, but it is estimated the average height for a male was approximately 5'1". Human height or stature is the distance from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head in a human body, standing erect.It is measured using a stadiometer, usually in centimetres when using the metric system, or feet and inches when using the imperial system.. Is it true that they were significantly shorter than modern day populations? Was there a point where the average human height was less than 4 feet? But the average cro magnon man was about 6 feet tall and the average neanderthal man was five feet and seven inches … I remember hearing somewhere that Jesus was only about four and a half feet tall, and was average height for most men at the time. I assume that humans 2000 years ago would have been, generally yet significantly, smaller than today's humans -- but how much smaller? Is it possible to see a limit in general height of population using historical data? What was the average height of someone in Europe 2000 years ago? The average height of men 1,000 years ago was actually just 2 or 3 inches shorter than today. Human height for both men and women has increased over the past century: this is true of every country in the world. Archaeologists have used fossil evidence to piece together information about the earliest humans. But, over the last few decades, human height in some countries have been stagnating. The average height went down in the late Middle Ages and only returned in the 20th century.