It doesn't provide a motivation for why this phenomenon only happened in the Netherlands, and not it's neighbors Belgium, Germany or Scandinavia.
Those would be much more similar in Social equality, and to some extent even dairy consumption.
Edit: I've corrected Holland, to read Netherlands. Apologies for the misnaming.
Dutch were really short because of malnutrition.
Perhaps people were trying to make sure their children become taller despite being so short. So they tend to marry the tallest people. This works because of improving nutrition.
Perhaps this preference for height became ingrained culturally in the society. This cultural preference becomes ingrained since it can be reproduced by relative isolation (cultural and/or physical).
According to the article, tall men were favored whereas average sized women were favored. I wonder why tall women weren't favored versus average sized women? I think these preferences are in general populations but were exaggerated here?
It's hard to be malnutritioned. Can you link why only Dutch were malnutritioned and not other Europeans?
You don't really lose much height through lacking diet. My grandmother was born in poverty and there was famine and drought at her time which killed 3 of her family members, yet she was 6'2 tall.
The dataset focuses on the north-east of the Netherlands (specifically the three provinces of Drenthe, Fryslân, and Groningen). So no, not Holland.
The Netherlands. "Holland" is the name of one Province in the Netherlands.
Edit: I stand corrected. Actually two provinces.
Example: Q: What you call your country? A: Deutschland Q: Ok, then we'll call it Germany
???
I like 'Navajo: Béésh Bich’ahii Bikéyah ("Metal Cap-wearer Land"), in reference to Stahlhelm-wearing German soldiers.'
My guess for Germany, which certainly seems the weirdest, is that it's a result of that process happening and the name getting fixed at different times for different languages, combined with the region having a rather complicated political history.
It's especially common when the two sides have difficulty communicating: "What do you call yourself?" "Ger man." (Spear man [1]) "... henceforth the lands east of the Rhine shall be known as Germania."
[1] This is only one possible etymology.
This apparently confused the English so much that they called the inhabitants of the Netherlands "Dutch".
They were already tall no? Were they ever shortest in Europe?