That year, the people of Shanxi woke up in terror.
The imperial court ordered them to immediately leave their familiar hometowns and go to the distant wasteland of the Central Plains to forcibly migrate to work.
Amid the suffocating fear, there are rumors that point to a glimmer of hope.
As long as you gather under the big locust tree in a certain county to receive the exemption certificate issued by the imperial court before the deadline, you can escape this catastrophe.
As soon as the news came out, people from all directions immediately rushed around, and the dust flew up. They waited all night under the locust tree, looking forward to the elusive freedom.
At dawn, a group of armed soldiers surrounded the people under the tree. It turned out that this was just another trap of power! The people were so distressed that they were forced to sign a relocation agreement.
In order to prevent escape, each of them had a blood-red wound on their little toe - a cruel mark of imprisonment.
When the wounds healed, they left two parted marks on their feet that lasted until death. History spirals downward, and there is no more completeness from generation to generation. During the reign of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, the scars on the little toes of the descendants of these immigrants are still clearly visible, and this indelible humiliation has been passed down from generation to generation.
The cruel wounds on the feet of the people who moved from Shanxi became the mark of the blood and tears they brought into the Central Plains.
As these immigrants take root in their new homeland and continue for generations, it is found that the two distinct marks on their feet will be passed down from generation to generation. This unique shape of the little toe seems to have become a natural sign of the descendants of the migrants, and the local people of the Central Plains rarely appear in it.
As a result, a legend quietly spread among the people - anyone whose little toe shows two petals separated must be the descendants of the tragic migration in the early Ming Dynasty. And these Shanxi migrants are regarded as representatives of the Han people with the deepest roots for generations.
In this way, the lobes of the little toe become the criterion for determining the identity and lineage of others.
Under the influence of this folklore, successive rulers often focused on this feature in the physical examination of their concubines in order to show the orthodox depiction of the ancestral bloodline. The shape of the little toe is no longer a microscopic individual difference in the body, but a senior and political element to verify the origin of the bloodline.
This absurd benchmark of judging people by appearance has become a tool for the operation of power by those in power.
Relatively speaking, the common people who were born with two distinct little toes also felt honored because of it. This is the unique mark given to them by the high imperial power, representing all the pure and orthodox bloodlines in their bodies.
Carrying this spiritual sustenance, they bowed and worshipped, grateful. As everyone knows, this is just a protracted and collective illusion.
The legend of the two petals of the little toe has become more and more spread among the people, and it has become a kind of collective subconscious. But as scientific research has progressed, questions have begun to question whether this seemingly absurd feature can really be used as a basis for determining ancestry.
Historians have found that the traumatic injuries caused by migration in the early Ming Dynasty cannot be passed on to future generations. The production of two lobes of the little toe is more like a dominant, genetically determined innate trait.
To confirm this hypothesis, a group of geneticists teamed up to conduct large-scale DNA sequencing and comparison experiments.
They collected tens of thousands of genetic samples from the two flaps of the little toe and normal people, and used high-throughput gene sequencing technology to sort and compare them.
It was found that the genetic material of the two was the same, and there were no changes in tissue structure like acquired trauma. This confirms that the two lobes of the little toe are a potentially congenital genetic trait rather than the result of acquired trauma.
In order to further verify this finding, researchers collected 5,000-year-old ancient human little toe specimens, among which found traces of two-petal differentiation in the Neolithic period.
This undoubtedly confirms that the roots of this characteristic predate the activities of the Han Chinese. Moreover, this variant has also been found in specimens of different ethnic groups in various places.
A series of genetic, histological, and archaeological studies have combined to demonstrate that the production of two lobes of the little toe is a random genetic variant that is independent of ethnicity and geography and has a global distribution.
Scientific research has completely disproved the erroneous assertion that this sign is only seen in the Han ethnic group.
Scientific research has overturned the absurd superstition that the two petals of the little toe are only found in the Han Chinese, so where is the source of its bloodline? Historians have searched to find the source of this genetic mutation.
In the careful screening of ancient records, there is a clue that has caught their attention - in the documents of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, it has been clearly recorded that there were people with little toes in the ancient Xianbei people.
The discovery was quite astonishing. The Xianbei people were an important ethnic group in the ancient north, and they frequently interacted and fought with the Han people in the Central Plains, many of which were intermarried.
To confirm this bold hypothesis, the researchers sequenced the DNA of the contemporary population, focusing on the genetic composition of the Han Chinese and their surrounding ethnic minorities. The results showed that in both the northeast and northwest regions, many Han descendants had residual fragments of ancient Xianbei genes in their bodies.
Obviously, at some point in ancient times, there was a large-scale genetic fusion and recombination between the Xianbei and Han people.
This provided a clear avenue for the spread of the little toe lobe feature – during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Xianbei regime ruled a vast area of the Central Plains. A large number of Xianbei people moved into the Central Plains and lived and married with the Han people.
The interpenetration and recombination of genes occurred at this time, and this genetic variation in the Xianbei body type was also transmitted into the Han bloodline.
Ethnic migration and integration are not the only sources of the little toe lobe. In fact, the rudiments of this trait were conceived much earlier in human activity.
Archaeological discoveries have found that as early as the Neolithic Age, the bones of the feet have been mutated, among which the little toe shows signs of deformed valgus. This is related to living in the wild for a long time, walking barefoot, and repeated friction.
The feet of the ancients had to be subjected to various stresses frequently. Years of wear and tear cause the little toe to become distorted, break and heal into two separate lobes.
This variation, adapted to survive in the wild, has been preserved and has become a common trait of the population.
It was not until the advent of sedentary life and work that this characteristic was further fixed in repeated use. In manual labor such as rice farming, people make extensive use of the feet, and the differentiation of the two petals of the little toe helps to reduce friction, and is naturally preserved.
It can be seen that the appearance of the little toe flap stems from the environmental adaptability of life since ancient times. It records the genetic mutations that occur in humans in order to adapt to the "barefoot life" in the course of their natural existence.
As the scientific researcher said: "It is the material memory left by life in the world, which engraves the dependence and struggle of life on this planet."