When archaeologists study the bones of ancient Greek people (from the Bronze Age through the Classical period), they find that most men averaged about 5'3" to 5'6". Because their diets were mostly agrarian (farming-based), the men didn't grow quite as tall as people do today
An underestimate but largely correct, per Claude. More like 5'7 (vs today's 5'10.
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Not quite — the comment gets the general gist right (ancient Greeks were shorter than today's population) but the specific numbers are too low, and the explanation is oversimplified.
What the skeletal evidence actually shows:
Physical anthropologist J. Lawrence Angel's classic studies of Greek skeletal remains found average heights of 170.5 cm (5'7.1") for Classical Greek males and 171.9 cm (5'7.7") for Hellenistic males, figures that have been corroborated by later studies of material from Corinth and the Athenian Kerameikos.
A more recent, larger-scale 2023 bioarchaeological study covering 9000 BC to 900 AD found that male stature over the last 10,000 years in Greece ranged from about 159.7 to 170.6 cm (roughly 5'3" to 5'7"), but importantly, heights weren't flat across that whole span — the study found a decrease from the Mesolithic to Neolithic, then a gradual increase from the Bronze Age through the Archaic/Classical period, followed by continued increase into the Roman era. So the low end of that range (5'3") reflects earlier/leaner periods like the Neolithic, not the Bronze Age–Classical stretch the comment is describing — by Classical times, men were closer to the top of that range, around 5'6"–5'7".
On the "agrarian diet" explanation: this is an oversimplification. Farming per se doesn't automatically stunt growth — plenty of well-fed agrarian societies produced tall populations. What actually drives stature in the bioarchaeological literature is more about
diet quality and diversity (protein intake, variety),
disease burden, and
living conditions, not agriculture as such. In fact, some researchers (like Geoffrey Kron) have argued ancient Mediterranean populations ate a fairly good, varied diet and weren't dramatically disadvantaged compared to many later pre-industrial periods — heights actually dipped further during parts of the Middle Ages before climbing again. There's also regional variation worth noting: skeletal evidence suggests Macedonian remains show taller men than southern Peloponnesians, likely tied to a higher-protein diet with more cattle products, which is more about diet composition than "agrarian vs. not."
Bottom line: Ancient Greeks (Classical period especially) were shorter than modern Greeks (who average around 5'10" today), but the commonly cited Classical-era figure is closer to 5'6"–5'7", not 5'3"–5'6", and the "agrarian diet" explanation is more of a folk simplification than what bioarchaeologists actually point to.