November 3rd, 2009
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The Puma
By: Adam Vagley
 It was just another Tuesday morning shotgunning beers at my mom’s house with Steve Guttenberg when the phone rang. It was The Puma. The Puma was my tour guide one day in Peru several years ago and we began an argument that has only grown with time.As you no doubt know, human height has trended upwards as medicine and nutrition improves. George Washington, at 6′1″ several inches taller than the average male today, would have been a giant in the 1700s.
If you ever go to Peru, one of the first things you will notice is that everyone there is mini. The average native could head butt me in the chest, but would need a step ladder to pick my nose or punch me in the face. This gave me a great feeling of security, as I knew I would have to be assaulted by at least 7 Peruvians to lose. This increases exponentially as you add more normal-sized humans, so with a buddy at my side we could handle around 24. I deliberately walked around Lima’s roughest neighborhoods with cash hanging out of my pockets.
I figured that their diet and health care is probably at least marginally better than it was 500 years ago, so the Incas were likely smaller, or at least on par with current dimensions. But according to The Puma, I was wrong. At the first ruin we visited, he asked the group:
“How tall do you think the Incans were?”
Me, after no one in the group says anything: “…4 feet tall?”
The Puma pauses for dramatic effect and then asks me: “How tall are you?”
Me: “About 5′11′’”.
The Puma: “They were taller than you.”
 His evidence was the fact that all the steps were very large, and why the hell would you build big steps if you had little legs. At every ruin, he pointed out the tall stairs and reminded everyone that the Incas had long legs and were taller than me. Not satisfied with brainwashing hundreds of naive tourists a week, he has taken his propaganda online. Google “how tall were the incas?” and one hit comes up on WikiAnswers. The answer probably won’t surprise you: “Incas were known to be very tall. Rumor has it that if you took the tallest man and compared it to an Inca, the man will go up to the Inca’s knees.” The Puma strikes! By the way, the tallest man on record is almost 9′, which makes the Incas about 40 feet tall using these dimensions, meaning they could have punched it out with a t-rex. I called him out in Peru and he never forgave me for it. Now he calls me once a week to tell me the Incas were huge. This from a guy who’s only about 5′2″.
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