This chart, taken from Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms, tracks the height of male skeletons found in Europe across nearly 2000 years, and compares those data points to recent, more complete height data in the US and Sweden. For nearly two millennia, male heights were stable, but upon the advent of the Industrial Revolution, they began to shoot up. There are many determinants of human height, but nutrition and overall living standards are crucial ones. We happen to be living in the first couple centuries of human existence to see huge advances in living standards, which shows up in height data, among many other places.