The Claim: You can trace your ancestry by looking at the length of your toes.
Science teachers can use Punnett squares to illustrate possible genotypes or the genetic makeup of an individual. For genes with two variants, the math may seem simple: a child with the dominant trait for curly hair and the recessive trait for straight hair would likely have curly hair.
But observable traits, or “phenotypes,” don’t just depend on genetic makeup. They depend just as much, or maybe moreon environmental effects, requiring more complex equations.
Dr. John H. McDonald, an evolutionary geneticist and retired associate professor at the University of Delaware, said some teachable examples can oversimplify and distort how traits are inherited. One such example concerns whether a person’s first or second toe is longer.
A recent post on Facebook in a public group from ancient Egypt, it includes sketches of different feet with different toe lengths, labeling the feet according to their supposed ancestry. For example, Norwegian feet are depicted with very small fourth and fifth toes, and Greek feet have a long second toe.
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“Greek toe” or “Morton’s toe”: a pathology widespread throughout the world
Dudley Joy Morton first rated a longer second toe as a health problem in 1927, calling it “Metatarsus Atavicus”. Further research has revealed more details about the prevalence and nature of this condition, now known as Morton’s toe or Greek toe.
Early studies of the “human toe formula” postulated a form of monogenic inheritance, but a 1973 study by Cathleen C. Papdopoulos and Albert Damon produced contrary conclusions. The researchers proposed “polygenic inheritance” – when a trait is determined by a set of genes – and their results show that longer second toes are found all over the world. Although the prevalence of this disease appears to vary, it generally affects approximately 10-30% of individuals in various populations, and is not unique to any particular ethnic group.
The results also demonstrate the frequencies for a larger first toe – the so-called “Egyptian foot” – as well as for the first and second toes of equal size. The latter appears to vary considerably between results, but McDonald suspects this is because the criteria for equality of length may differ between researchers.
Although McDonald said that some traits are highly correlated with ancestry, such as wet or dry earwaxthe scientific literature does not report such associations with toe length.
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What is the intervention of the Greeks?
Morton’s toe sometimes has another name: Greek toe. Although scientific evidence shows no correlation between longer second toes and Greek ancestry, the origin of the nickname may lie in the Greek perception of beauty, presented through their artistic talent.
In 1897, a article in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal claimed that in “ancient Greek art, where careful modeling (sic) of the toes is attempted, the first toe is separated from the second and, in most cases, the second toe is depicted as somewhat longer than the first “.
In fact, the Statue of Liberty has a longer second toe; the sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi studied Greek and Roman sculptures, model the feet of the statue to define “its heritage since the first days of civilization”. According to a National Park Service document, the “anatomical, political, and ethnic logic” of classical artists begins and ends with the presence of longer second toes among some of the population. In fact, many Roman statues have Greek feet, simply because the artists took inspiration from each other.
McDonald said he believed this was the starting point that preceded claims about other foot shapes and ancestry, ultimately leading to the belief that, according to this article, German feet have exactly three central toes. of the same length, and so on.
“I have seen no evidence that the so-called ‘Greek foot’ is more common in Greece than anywhere else. I suspect it started with someone calling it the Greek foot, then someone else calling it the Egyptian foot…then a “foot reader” just took it and ran with it, and found a bunch of other foot shapes,” he said.
Our rating: False
The claim that toe length can be used as a reliable tool to trace ethnicity is FALSE. Variations in foot shape appear among populations and cannot be linked to particular ethnic groups. Existing research supports that Morton’s toe or Greek toe is the result of polygenic inheritance and is therefore more difficult to simply trace.
Our verified sources:
- Dennis O’Neil, “Probability of Inheritance”
- National Human Genome Research Institute, “Phenotype“
- Atef Mohamed Abdo, Facebook post
- The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, “Metatarsus Atavicus”
- American Journal of Physical Anthropology, “Some genetic traits in Solomon Islands populations. III. Relative toe length”
- The New York Times, January 26, 2006 – “Japanese scientists identify earwax gene“
- Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, “The Human Foot in Art”
- Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, “AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SECOND TOE LENGTH AND ANDROGEN-RELATED BEHAVIORS”
- National Park Service, “The Statue of Liberty’s Toes – or Why She Can Wear Sandals”
Sarah Lynch is an intern at the Asbury Park Press and editor-in-chief of Marist Circle at Marist College. Contact her at SDLynch@gannett.com or via Twitter at @sarahdlynch.
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