POLYDACTYLISM REVISITED:

Six-toed footprint, Potash Road,

Moab, UT. Photo: Peter Faris,

7 October 2001.

On October 28, 2017, I publish a column titled Another Push-Me-Pull-You about a Fremont Style image from a remarkable site West of Moab, Utah, along Potash Road. Here I wish to present another image from the same site, another example of polydactylism - a six-toed footprint.

Closeup of six-toed footprint,

Potash Road, Moab, UT.

Photo: Peter Faris, 7 October 2001.

I have written previously about H. Marie Wormington's theory about polydactylism. Early in her long career she had excavated a Fremont burial with six fingers on each hand and grave goods indicating that the burial was a high-status individual. She explained that her interpretation of this was that a person with extra digits (or otherwise "different") was perhaps seen as "special" and treated accordingly within the clan or tribe. That fact influenced her to interpret Fremont Style hand-and-foot-prints with six digits as representations of important individuals who also possessed this genetic trait (Wormington, personal communication).

We do find numbers of six-fingered-or-toed representations in Fremont rock art, and Ms. Wormington's hypothesis seems to me to be an eminently reasonable explanation.  In any case they are interesting to find, and speculate about.

REFERENCE:

Wormington, Hannah Marie - personal communication, 1982.