The Pigeon-toed People of the Western World

The Pigeon-toed People of the Western World 

Many studies have been made of the way in which the development of the dexterous human hand has hastened our evolution.  

However some of us are far more interested in the way in which the development of the human foot has impeded that evolution. 

I like to think the shape of our feet is influenced by our ancient DNA. And not just our Homo Sapiens, Neanderthal or even Denisovan DNA, but origins that go back much further. 

As animals first emerged from the oceans - their flippers transforming into limbs - then crawled onto land, stood erect and learned to run, jump and climb, traces of those evolutionary stages may have remained in our muscle memory. So much so that some people still retain early aquatic memories of physical freedom and graceful buoyancy: achieved with little more than a fluttering of their hands and feet and a suspension of disbelief. These memories reveal themselves in their sleep as dreams of flying. 

Others, on the other hand, hanker for their first encounter with the land, the feeling of solid ground beneath their feet, conscious of their own weight, sturdy gait and the pull and push of gravity. 

Ancient peoples invented dances to celebrate these primal memories while honouring their deities and performing rites of passage. So were born the hip-shaking, arm-waving, sensuously rhythmic dances of the earthbound, splay-toed people and the spinning, leaping, prancing dances of the aquatic people – that is, those with pointier legs and feet. 

The so-called pigeon-toed people belong to the Aquatic category. They first braved the seas (whose scourging embrace they did not fear as from the ocean they had once emerged and to the ocean they would return) ... they first braved the seas around 10,000 years ago, slipped into the surf in their simple dugout ships and rowed fearlessly westwards from their tiny island in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. An island where their Australopithecan DNA and 300 generations of inbreeding had enhanced a genetic trait which enabled its carriers to run faster, kick footballs into the sky, spring high enough to slam-dunk a basketball or clear a 3 metre pole, climb a ships’ mast or Giant Redwood with the greatest of ease and obtain gainful employment as catwalk models. 

To be more specific, pigeon-toed people are built for speed. They have stronger shin muscles, dissipate less energy when in contact with the ground and look altogether more attractive than lesser-blessed humans, so are likely to have many more children. Pretty soon we’ll all be pigeon-toed. 

Best of all, they have perfected the art of dream-flying. This is why we should thank them for having the imagination to get us off the ground altogether and into the air. It is no coincidence that Leonardo de Vinci, Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier and both Wright Brothers were pigeon-toed. 

Earthbound, splay-toed people, on the other hand, tend to have nightmares about losing their grip, falling off cliffs and drowning. 

The bendy-limbed Pigeon-toed people like to paint their toenails a different colour every week – because they can. And they often go without shoes so that they can show off their pretty feet as they do their spinning, leaping, prancing dances or practice their parkour. 

The Splay-toed people are equally as proud of their hip-shaking, arm-waving, sensuously rhythmic dances, but they prefer to wear sandals with socks. They don’t paint their toenails, but they do paint their faces. Their square, sturdy posture enables them to lift enormous weights without flinching and specialise in creative activities best expressed at ground-level such as architecture, croquet, cabbage-growing and Haka dancing.  

Without the Splay-toed we would have no cities or civilizations: we’d have remained bruised, bloody hunter-gatherers forever. Once they set their minds to something, the Splay-toed persevere and become specialists, while the Pigeon-toed are too busy farting about to stick with anything for long. And nobody cares, because they are beautiful. 

But there is a BIG problem. The Splay and Pigeon-toed people have always loathed each other’s guts.  

Although it may appear that societies are rifted by differences in race, religion, political ideology, territorial claims, disproportionate resources – or all of those, and many wars are still being fought due to those schisms, the real, fundamental differences between people are those between the Earthbound and the Aquatic: in other words, differences in the shape of their feet. 

To make matters worse, there are subdivisions within the Earthbound and the Aquatic - as many subdivisions as there are within Buddhism, Judaism, Islam or Christianity, and in a similar way none of the branches can agree as each of them thinks they are perfect. 

The subdivisions within the Earthbound and the Aquatic are characterised by their toe alignments: Egyptian (sloping down from big toe to pinky), Roman (three up, two down), Greek (assertive middle toe), German (one up, four down) or Celtic (all over the place). And those Aquatics with webbed toes are of the highest caste, being part-amphibian and able to swim like fish. 

In the past, this deep-seated antipathy would be resolved through physical combat. The Pigeon-toed were excellent kick-boxers, whereas the Splay-toed could hold their ground and box with their fists until, of course, the Great Boxer Rebellion of 1899, when rebels calling themselves the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists rose up against the Eight-Nation Alliance of Imperialist Foreign Powers. And lost. 

Box Hill, a peak in the North Downs in southern England, was the location of a far more ancient battle when in 1067 the fierce, blue-faced, Splay-toed Atrebate Celts successfully fought off an invading army of Pigeon-toed Normans: a historic fist-fight which could have been a turning-point in the war had the French not brought with them croissants and foie gras. 

Until recently every house in Britain would have had its own box room, in which domestic disputes could be resolved with hand-to-hand combat. But this is no longer allowed, and most box rooms have now become en suite showers. 

With the development of ever-more lethal modern weaponry, it appears the increasingly polarised human race is in very real danger of obliterating itself. “Bravo!” says Mother Nature. “Good riddance to bad rubbish. Let’s press the reset button again.” 

But I say no, let’s ditch our drones and learn the Highland Fling, the Flamenco and Hip Hop, then we can have giant, international dance-offs. These would be held in bespoke  stadia with sprung floors, and sponsored by the world’s leading shoe manufacturers whose logos would be displayed in moving neon lights around the walls of the arenas.  

Dance-offs wouldn’t work, of course, for those with two left feet. But that’s a whole other ballgame. 

I’m happy to say feet run on both sides of my family – splay-toed one side, pigeon-toed the other, and my feet are a funny mixture of the two.   

Back in the Old Country my (pigeon-toed) grandfather, Louis, had a reputation as a skillful bootmaker.  When he came to England, however, his older siblings told him that bootmaking was a dirty trade and it was more respectable to be a tailor, so he bought himself a sewing machine. The trouble was in those days every other person was a tailor, and anyway he wasn’t very good at it (his seams were always crooked) and he should have stuck with bootmaking. People can’t always afford new suits, but they will always need boots.  

Louis, from whom I inherited the webbed toes on my left foot (which is a very good swimmer – the right foot not so much: I tend to swim in circles) was truly Aquatic. He was reputed to have swum across the raging waters of the River Dniester from Moldova to Bessarabia the night before his wedding to my grandmother Eva (first cousin of a champion boxer and just as capable of holding her ground). Louis sneaked a peek at his petite dark-eyed, black-haired 18-year-old bride-to-be and decided she would do. They had 9 children. 

Like other Aquatic people Louis was also a very good dancer. So good, it was said he could wear out a pair of shoes in a night, dancing the Kazatske. (He could always make himself some more.)  

Louis did have dreams of flying, although in reality he was actually better at fleeing – from one pogrom to another. He made sure his wife and children had good shoes though, so that they could run faster. 

Then there was my (splay-toed) Great Uncle Elias on my father’s side, an accomplished tailor, who very sensibly left Paris with his wife and three children just before the 2nd World War and sailed to Brazil, where – who knows  why? - he opened a small shoe shop in Oscar Freire Street, Sao Paolo and, taking a punt, imported some flamboyant fish-skin shoes from a barking mad Italian shoemaker friend called Salvatore. The shoes were an instant hit with the Paulistanos, and saved both Elias and Salvatore from almost certain financial ruin as neither of them had the first clue about running a business: especially not a shoe business. 

Salvatore Ferragamo’s fame spread, however, and he subsequently made a pair of rainbow-coloured platform shoes for the miniscule Judy Garland, raising her up so high she felt she could fly. I am not making this up. 

I happen to have more shoes than clothes (sandals and DMs are my favourites), and I hope you can now understand how, being descended from people like Louis and Elias, I spend almost every night dreaming about shoes – or flying. Stories which feature both shoes or flying are the best. Let’s face it – Cinderella and the Wizard of Oz are all about the shoes. Flying is all very well, but shoes ground us. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.