Palm lines are creases in the skin of your hand. Most pages on them tell you either what they are or what palmists say they mean. This one does both, and the tool above lets you trace your own. Start with which line is which, since you have them in front of you.
Find yours now
Hold your hand up in good light, palm towards you, and bend your fingers a little. The real creases deepen as the skin folds, which is the quickest way to tell a line from a wrinkle. Then go across the palm in this order. The tracer uses the same letters.
- aHeart line
- The highest crease across the palm. It starts at the little-finger edge, runs under the fingers and usually rises towards the index or middle finger.
- bHead line
- The next crease down. It starts at the thumb-side edge, just above the thumb, often along with the life line, and heads across the palm.
- cLife line
- The curve round the ball of the thumb, from that same edge down towards the wrist.
- dFate line, if you have one
- Up the middle of the palm towards the middle finger. Often faint, broken, or several lines at once, and many hands have none.
Anything else you can see is a minor line or a wrinkle. The palm reading chart labels the rest of what palmists name, and palm reading lines says what each is read for. This page stays with what they physically are.
What palm lines are
They are flexion creases. Your palm bends a great deal, and its skin needs somewhere to fold. BBC Science Focus puts it simply: the creases "develop before birth" and let us make a fist "without excessive stretching". A 2010 anatomy paper describes their role in the same terms, as one that "facilitates folding of palm skin for free hand movement".
That same paper ties each crease to a joint. The radial longitudinal crease, the palmist's life line, "becomes distinct according to the flexion of carpometacarpal joints of the thumb": it marks where the base of your thumb folds across. The two transverse creases go with the big knuckles at the base of your fingers. Close your hand slowly and watch all three happen.
- aDistal transverse crease
- bProximal transverse crease
- cRadial longitudinal crease
- Distal transverse crease
- What palmists call itHeart line
- What it goes withThe fingers' big knuckles, folding down
- What the old books made of itCheiro: it "relates purely to the affectionate disposition".
- Proximal transverse crease
- What palmists call itHead line
- What it goes withThe same knuckles
- What the old books made of itCheiro: "the most important sign that can be found in the hand".
- Radial longitudinal crease
- What palmists call itLife line
- What it goes withThe base of the thumb
- What the old books made of itCheiro claimed it could "foretell the length of life". Three studies tested this, and two found nothing.
The authors of the most recent of those studies put the anatomical view in a sentence: the line of life is "merely another flexion crease". Anatomists use the long names, and a palmistry chart uses the short ones. They refer to the same skin.
When they form
Well before birth. A 1986 study looked at 160 fetuses at 6 to 20 weeks and reported that most creases develop at about the same time as the fetal volar pads, the small mounds that appear on the early hand. It also found that "with some exceptions, the creases seem to develop independently of the flexion movements of hand and foot". An older study, Bali and Chaube in 1971, as reported by Wikipedia, also has a crease appearing before the fingers start to move.
So the obvious story, that your hand folded until a line wore in, doesn't seem to be what happens. The creases are there to fold along, and the folding comes later. We couldn't find a clear account of what decides your particular pattern. If a page tells you, ask for its source.
Three lines, four or more
If you've read two articles on palm lines, you've probably seen two different counts. They're all counting different things.
None of them is wrong. A palmist wants a vocabulary, and a biometrics engineer wants what survives a bad photo. That second need is why our tracer searches for only the three principal lines and the fate line, and leaves the rest for you to place.
How common each pattern is
Most palms have two separate creases across them. In the three surveys we could open, 84 to 91% of palms do. The other patterns have names of their own: a single crease runs right across where two would be, a Sydney crease is the lower crease carried on to the far edge of the palm, and a Suwon crease is the upper one carried across the whole palm.
Belay 2022. 1,664 palms of students at the University of Gondar, Ethiopia
Two separate creases 90.8% / Single crease 5% / Sydney 1.92% / Suwon 2.3%
Ranjit 2019. 252 students and staff of a teaching hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal
Two separate creases 90.1% / Single crease 7.7% / Sydney 1.4%
Park 2010. 5,196 palms from 3,216 volunteers in Suwon, Korea
Two separate creases 84.4% / Single crease 12.6% / Sydney 2.5% / Suwon 0.5%
Patterns also tend to match between hands: 93.1% of the Gondar students had the same pattern on both palms. Numbers vary a lot between samples: the 2010 Korean study, the one that named the Suwon crease, put it at 0.5% of palms against the 2.3% at Gondar, and the single crease at 12.6% against 5.0%.
If you have a single crease, you are in good company. MedlinePlus says it is "often normal", and appears in about 1 out of 30 people. It can appear alongside some medical conditions, but it isn't a diagnosis of anything, and a doctor is the person to ask if you're concerned. Our page on the single crease goes through the evidence.
Do palm lines change?
The big ones hardly at all, as far as anyone has measured. Biometrics researchers Liu and Zhang write that the three principal lines "vary little over time", and that palm lines are "stable and reliable for individual identification". Wrinkles are another matter: "much thinner than principal lines and much more irregular". That doesn't mean a line can never change. It means identification systems can count on the main ones, which is a modest claim about a practical task.
We found no study that photographed the same palms year after year for decades, so if someone tells you your lines changed because your life did, they don't have data behind them, and neither do we against it. What you can test is lighting. Take two photos under different lamps, and you'll see fine lines come and go with no change to your hand.
Why the tracer can miss, and how to drag a line
The tracer looks for thin dark valleys in your photo, then follows the cheapest path along them. The scanner page shows those steps with real pictures. It works best on the deep creases and has trouble with what you'd expect: faint lines, a shadow with a hard edge, anything lying on your palm, and the lower end of the life line, where parallel creases can pull it off course. Our test figures are on the methodology page.
So the tracer asks you to check it. It opens with handles already showing, because that is what this tool is for, and the same five moves work on every line:
- Upload one clear photo of your whole open hand, or use your camera.
- When the lines are drawn, tap a line or its name to bring up its handles.
- Drag a handle to where you see the crease. The line snaps to the nearest crease and measures itself again.
- For the fate line, choose Place my own. The sun, marriage, children and money lines start empty, so tap one of those names. Tap where the line starts, then where it ends.
- Press See my reading to read what your lines measured.
The snap is real: the line looks for the nearest crease between your handles as you drag. Its length is measured again, and your reading is rebuilt from where you put the line. It says "placed by you" from then on. "Put it back" returns the line to the scan's version, and arrow keys move a handle if you'd rather not drag.
Fate and the four minor lines work differently because the tracer doesn't try to find them. When we tested a search for the minor lines, every trace it made was wrong, so it stays off and the choice is yours. Tap where the line starts, and dashes show where it usually runs. Tap where it ends, and it snaps to the crease between those two points. What a placed line means is a matter for the map of the lines. The other things the same photo can do are on the tools page.
Read next
Sources
- Why do we have lines on the palms of our hands?
- Improved analysis of palm creases
- Embryological development of human palmar, plantar, and digital flexion creases
- Single transverse palmar crease
- Palm-Line Detection
- Prevalence of palmar crease patterns among students at University of Gondar, Ethiopia
- Palm creases analysis in students and staff of a teaching hospital in Kathmandu
- Single palmar crease
- Predicting longevity from the line of life: is it accurate?
- Palmistry for All
- What You Should Know About Palmistry