Giants With Six Fingers and Six Toes

Three Rivers, NM

Ancient man was not stupid. He may not have had cell phones, but he could certainly count fingers and toes and yet he managed to portray specifically those with extra digits, not in all art work, but in the occasional work. 

If one lived in a world that had six-fingered/six-toed humans and also humans with five-toes/five-fingers, in portraying storytelling on cave walls and rock faces, do you think it would be important to represent each "tribe" of humanity by showing the fingers/toes as an easy identifier or, in other words, "us" versus "them"? 

It is related in the Bible of the six fingers and six toes of the giant race, and the same is reported from those who uncovered the bones from the earth. This race was all over the earth, long before we stumbled from Africa, and they apparently left quite an impression in the art work everywhere and in religious texts!

Newspaper Rock, Utah

Chaco Canyon, NM

Mogollon Rim, AZ

France

Sumerian

Mexico

Chile

Three Rivers, Mexico

I have heard many times from Bigfoot researchers of them coming across six-toed tracks. Here is an example I found online - 

Source: I live in Penticton BC. I usually don't tell this story because everyone laughs at me, here it is, take it or leave it.

About 5 years ago, I was mountain biking with friends NE of Penticton, BC, when I came across footprints that were about 18" long, a left foot and a right. They were about 4" in the ground, which was very hard (an old railway bed). They had 6 toes, yes 6 toes on each foot and the prints had grain and lines to them like your hand does. I left them and went to get my friends, when I came back with my friends they all laughed, they thought I did it as a trick. Honestly, I couldn't reproduce what I found even if I wanted to, I have thought about how a forgery could have been made but the details on the print itself, and the fact they were 4" in the old train tracks, truck tire tracks only sink in maybe 1 inch. The prints were heading west down a very steep bank, to the east was a cliff about 35-40' straight up. Assuming the tracks were real, it appeared the bigfoot had jumped down the cliff onto the tracks and continued down the embankment, explaining the depth of the prints.

Why polydactyly?

Polydactyly or multiple fingers/toes happen occasionally in our own population

Source:  Closely inbred communities have been known to inherit the genetic abnormality. In ancient times in the Levant, polydactylism was considered to be a mark of the Rephaim, a race of giants, who apparently needed more digits than normal folk. In the Old Testament, the book of Samuel describes such giants (II Samuel 21:20):  "Yet again there was war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number; and he also was born to the giant."

Art by Jan van Scorel "Adam and Eve"

Did the artist give Adam an extra finger to show superhuman traits or those of the "first" people?

There are many syndromes and mutations genetically that can cause extra digits in our population, but what if that trait was in a close breeding population? In that case, it would be familial, passed down through generations. If you have two parents in our population who have the gene, it is dominant.

Now mind you, not all ancient giants were found with extra digits. Many reports of finds do not specify such an unusual trait, but some do report six fingers, six toes, and double rows of teeth, so what we can discern from this happening frequently enough to be a pattern, but not all the time, is that the breeding pool was limited. With enough inbreeding, they can carry traits fixed traits through the lineage. This particular characteristic cropped up regularly with the trait in both parents.

At some point, these giants could not mate with the Homo sapiens (maybe never could?), and maybe not with the Neanderthal or Denisovans. They became a breeding island, reaching a bottleneck, no doubt. This is also why the ancient Native People were able to go at them in battle by sheer numbers. It might also explain an interesting feature we see today in those of us who believe that the giant bones found in America are the ancestor race of the giants we have in our woods today - Sasquatch. 

Our dilemma is that, explaining Sasquatch as a descendant whose ancestors were killed and driven into the wild, means we have an even smaller breeding population, more inbreeding and over thousands of years more simple-minded folks who do not remember their origins or being a superior race who was intellectually ahead of the newcomer Homo sapiens. Hence, this could be the reason the Sasquatch are not technologically savvy. It also would mean whatever traits they inbred among themselves have become fixed now in all the offspring.

There are lots of tales and religious text that speak of other giants with extra digits. The brother of Goliath, the Gittite (of Gath), a phenomenal man whose name is not given was reported as, "a giant with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in all."

The epic of Gilgamesh also mentions the ancient race that had six fingers and six toes and it is even portrayed in Sumerian art.

1 Chronicles 20:6 "In still another battle, which took place at Gath, there was a huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot--twenty-four in all. He also was descended from Rapha." The Rapha or Rephaim, were referred to as dead ancestors who were very tall, with their king being measured at around 13 feet. The word Rephaim is translated to mean "those whose speech makes buzzing sounds," and that is intriguing as well, as such features have been heard among the Sasquatch.

Conclusion

As we see, it's not unusual for Homo sapiens to have extra digits and if we had a village in which there were a few with such a trait and they bred in a close breeding pool, eventually that trait would become more dominantly seen in the people. There would still be the off chance a woman with no gene for polydactyly mates with a man who has it in his family and they produce one child with the trait, perhaps two without it. In that case, a good deal of the inbred population would have the feature and some would not. This might account for the reports of some finds of giants having six fingers/six toes or double rows of teeth and some not having them. They were in a tight exclusive breeding pool, so it popped up enough to be unique, but not enough to be absolutely a characteristic of their race. In other words, they were not born to have this many digits, they were born to have five like us, they only bred in a way that it showed up in their villages often. In fact, I believe this also shows us that the ancient giant race was not able to breed with other branches of man, such as us Homo sapiens. 

For your titillation, here are some famous people born with extra digits: Taye Diggs was born with six fingers on each hand. Gemma Arterton was born with one extra finger on each hand - it runs strongly in her family (familial polydactyly).  Halle Berry is said to have had an extra toe on one foot.

Of course, this deviation is the same deviation giants had, it is not indicator of a relationship genetically between giants and Homo sapiens. It's very prominent place in the giant population; however, shows this variation had become dominant within a small population.

More info:

Polydactylism in the ancient world

Southwest art and polydactyly 

Biblical Comparisons