Dr. Alvaro Montenegro’s new paper in PLOS ONE (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287290) on ancient canoe voyages and thermoregulation (body temperature) shows that mariners with a larger body sizes would have experienced lower heat loss during the voyage to New Zealand and as a result had an energy advantage compared to mariners with smaller body sizes. See more at https://news.osu.edu/how-larger-body-sizes-helped-the-colonizers-of-new-zealand/. Dr. Montenegro’s work is already being cited to explain the large size of rugby players in the country (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/epic-migration-could-have-been-the-making-of-new-zealands-all-blacks-s60889zpz), although we stress that the link between ancient ocean voyages and rugby hasn’t been scientifically verified!