More on Celtic Toes

[gilmore]

"Discover, June, 1996
The Germanic tribes of Angles and Saxons who invaded Britain in the fifth and
sixth centuries A.D. left a significant legacy. Their language evolved into
modern English, largely replacing indigenous Celtic tongues. Some of their laws
formed the basis of English common law. And their feet, it the basis of modern
Englishmen.

Or so says Phyllis Jackson, a retired Gloucestershire podiatrist. Jackson got
her first inkling of a distinctively Saxon foot during World War II, when
Hereford, the small city in western England where she then lived, was flooded
with refugees from more significant cities (which were being bombed by
latter-day Germans). Some of these evacuees became Jackson's patients, and some
of them turned out to be of Celtic descent - Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and
Cornish. "Poor things were coming to me with awful bunions," recalls Jackson. "I
realized that the foot shape I was dealing with was quite different from the
English one I was accustomed to."

Traditional English feet, Jackson says, tend to be broad and somewhat pointed -
the toes form a steep angle from the first to the fifth. The Celtic evacuees, in
contrast, had toe tips that were almost level with one another, and their feet
tended to be longer and slimmer - except for a bulge at the base of the big toe,
where bunions form. The English shoe being modeled on the English foot, many of
Jackson's new patients "couldn't cram their feet into that shape of shoe." Hence
they developed the bunions.

After retiring from podiatry, Jackson took up amateur archeology but kept her
focus on feet. Examining the skeletal remains of a few dozen Saxons and Celts
from a sixth-century cemetery in Lechlade, Gloucestershire, she found she could
readily tell them apart. It wasn't just that the Saxons were the ones buried
with bronze brooches and amber necklaces - they also had feet shaped like modem
English feet. Jackson also found a distinctive feature in the cuboid bone, just
beneath the fourth and fifth toes: it was slightly scrunched on one side in
Saxon feet, but more square in Celts.

Aside from stimulating people of British descent to take a closer look at their
extremities, Jackson's research - which has not been subjected to formal peer
review - may help British archeologists. They have traditionally relied on
burial artifacts to distinguish Celtic from Saxon skeletons, thus glossing over
the likelihood that some Celts adopted Saxon ways. "What she is offering is a
possibility of being able to sort out the immigrant from the indigenous
population," says archeologist Barry Cunliffe of Oxford. "She needs a bigger
sample, but she's spotted differences that are very real and very well worth
following up."

See http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...17/ai_18289437

[Clockwork John]

... The Celtic evacuees, in contrast, had toe tips that were almost level with one another, and their feet tended to be longer and slimmer - except for a bulge at the base of the big toe, where bunions form. The English shoe being modeled on the English foot, many of Jackson's new patients "couldn't cram their feet into that shape of shoe." Hence they developed the bunions.

Hmmm... That pretty much describes the shape of my feet, and the problem I have finding shoes.

[beloitpiper]

That's really fascinating! That's so cool that it goes beyond red hair and blue eyes...