These days you have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to get a free ride to the top , but in ancient times , an excess toe was all it took . According to unexampled archaeological grounds , people displayingpolydactyly – refer to the possession of redundant digit on the hands or feet – were given preferential treatment among the pre - Columbian Puebla communities that inhabited the Chaco Canyon in New Mexico a thousand years ago .
Writing in the journalAmerican Antiquity , researchers account the determination of hand and foot - shaped artifacts and picture at an ancient site live as Pueblo Bonito . Consisting of a immense act of rooms , including burial chambers and ceremonial alters , the Pueblo Bonito building complex is think to have been construct in the late 9th 100 , before being expanded over the following 200 years as it build up into a site of major social and spiritual grandness .
When initial excavations took place in 1896 , archaeologist get word the skeletal remains of 96 hoi polloi , three of whom possess an excess toe . This is pretty surprising , since polydactyly only affects 1.32 out of every 1,000 people in the US . Discovering such a high prevalence of the condition at Pueblo Bonito therefore indicates that masses with redundant digits may have held a in high spirits social status in Chaco smart set , leading to improved reproductive winner and the passing on of the genetic mutation creditworthy for the condition .
Why this is the case is something of a mystery , although several scholars have noted that ancientMesoamerican divinitieswere often depicted with surplus finger’s breadth and toes . It is therefore possible that people with this condition were somehow insure as divine .
Shown is a petroglyph – a carved prototype – of a six - toed animal foot by the Puebla comunity 1,000 years ago . Courtesy of Chaco Culture National Park / Patricia L. Crown
Taking a secretive look at the Pueblo Bonito relics , the researchers key that one charwoman who had six toe on her correct base was buried with 698 aquamarine beads scattered over her right ankle , apparently as an offering to her polydactyly . The research worker also remark that while many of the walls at Pueblo Bonito are beautify with handprints and footprints , those with more than five fingers or toes were most ordinarily found in and around burial chambers and ceremonial rooms , hint they were of higher grandness .
Furthermore , it is assumed that multitude with extra toe would have break a special type of footgear know as jog - toe sandal , as normal brake shoe would have been extremely uncomfortable . With this in mind , it is significant that the legal age of stone offering and implement discovered at ceremonial sites throughout Pueblo Bonito appeared to be in the shape of jog - toe sandals .
On the whole , the Chaco people are draw by the subject authors as a civilisation with a fixation on infantry and footwear , yet with a peculiar preference for those with supernumerary toes .
