White travelers and missionaries who found themselves in the central regions of Tropical Africa, without saying a word, were surprised to note one characteristic circumstance, namely, the extremely complex ethnic composition of the population. Suffice it to say that peoples of the most ancient anthropological types met here.
These are pygmies and negroids, the Cushite peoples and the Semitic-Hamite population, next to the stunted pygmies, whose height does not exceed 149 centimeters, giants live in Burundi and Rwanda - Tutsis, the tallest people on the planet. Tutsis have an average height of 186 centimeters. Two-meter women are not uncommon here, and among men there are “Uncle Styopa” 2.3 meters high.
Although almost 200 years have passed since the time of the great explorer of Africa David Livingstone, few scientists - geographers or ethnographers have managed to penetrate into the remote, unexplored regions of the black continent. Therefore, to this day there is no exact information about all the tribes living here.
Moreover, some peoples are practically unknown, others, such as the Bushmen living in the Kalahari Desert, cause great bewilderment among specialists by the mysterious features of the origin of their language, which is more like a bird's whistle than speech.
In southern Africa, there have long been rumors of a strange tribe of "claw-footed" people. These stories have always been given no more importance than any other similar tales. However, representatives of an outlandish tribe were found relatively recently and even photographed.
They turned out to be very shy people, one might say unsociable. They settle away from the outside world, hiding from prying eyes deep in the bush. They lead an almost primitive life, breeding livestock, and provide themselves with everything they need. According to some assumptions, the number of the tribe of "kdeshnfoots" can reach several hundred people.
Outwardly, no different from other Bantu peoples, this tribe has only one feature - among them children are born, both with ordinary five-toed feet, and two-toed ones. But within the tribe itself, there is no prejudice towards them, because both of them are born from the same parents.
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The main part of the Wadoma tribe lives in Southern Rhodesia, the rest moved to Botswana. Journalists who penetrated the "world" of a strange tribe managed to talk to some of the inhabitants of a village located fifty kilometers from Francistown, in Botswana.
The tribe name Vadoma is plural. And each individual representative of the tribe is called mudoma.
The head of the family, in which there are five children, two of them are five-fingered, three are two-fingered, Mkhahlani Malise said:
“When I was little, I didn’t even suspect that there was something unusual in me. My mother was also two-fingered and many of my tribal relatives. It seemed to me that all people can have either two or five fingers on their feet, as, say, some animals have horns, while others do not. My legs don't give me any trouble. Those with five toes walk no better than me; all my life I felt very strong and not so long ago I regularly walked to Francistown and back.
In early childhood, when I was growing up in my native village, I had to hear from adults the story of how two-toed people appeared in our tribe. They say that a long time ago, when the first child was born in our tribe, who had only two toes on his feet, people were very scared. They decided that it was some kind of witchcraft, and killed the newborn. This has always been done with babies who have had some strange appearance from birth.
Then the same woman again gave birth to a two-toed child. And although they did the same to him, people hesitated: maybe this is some kind of sign and it's worth seeing what it means? Soon the third two-toed child was born to the same woman. This one was left to live. They reasoned that the will of the Almighty was to create a two-fingered person.
When I was born, this whole story was already considered very old. Among my friends there were many like myself, and never in our tribe were two-toed ones considered special people. As far as I remember, at that time we had about fifty two-fingered people in our village."
Mkhahlani Malise, having moved to Botswana, married a local girl here, she bore him five children. The first two were quite normal children, the next three had a pincer foot.
“I don’t care what their legs are,” says the father. - "I am glad that I have five children, and how many toes they have does not bother me or anyone else in our village."
However, it turned out that the youngest of the children, Bemba, had birth arms as unusual as legs. The left hand has two thumbs, the index finger is twisted in the first phalanx, and between the middle and ring fingers is an underdeveloped joint. The right hand has only two fingers, thumb and forefinger.
At the right time, he is rescued … legs, which are very well developed in two-toed people. Taking a glass in his right leg, and a bottle of beer in his left leg, Bemba deftly demonstrated to photographers how he can do without using his hands.
In order to understand the reasons for such strange hereditary traits, a thorough study of all representatives of the "clawfoot" tribe is necessary, but it has not yet been undertaken.
Without waiting for conclusions, a number of biologists put forward their assumptions. They proceed from the fact that usually people of the same tribe cannot enter into incestuous marriages among themselves. And if such a rule were adhered to by "pincers", then in one or two generations the "claws" would disappear.
But obviously, the possibilities for marriage were very limited here, and therefore, contrary to tradition, kinship marriages took root. It was they who caused the appearance of a random mutation, which then grew into a genetic marriage. There is no other more suitable version regarding the origin of two-toed people.
Irina STREKALOVA