Posted on 11/22/2019 4:44:45 AM PST by SunkenCiv
While there's no righty or lefty gene, DNA does seem to play a role in handedness. In a recent study published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology, researchers at the University of Oxford looked at the DNA of about 400,000 people in the U.K. and found that four regions of the genome are generally associated with left-handedness. Three out of these four regions were involved in brain development and structure. Some researchers hope that studying the biological differences between lefties and righties could shed light on how the brain develops specializations in its right and left hemispheres...
Righties have dominated for as far back in the archaeological record as researchers can see, about 500,000 years, Uomini said. Neanderthals, our now-extinct human cousins, were also strongly right-handed.
That makes humans pretty strange among animals. Several nonhuman species, such as the other great apes, are individually handed, but the split between righties and lefties is typically closer to 50-50.
What caused our extreme bias toward right-handedness to evolve and persist? From an evolutionary perspective, if right-handedness evolved because it had some kind of advantage, then you might expect left-handers to disappear completely, Uomini told Live Science. She added that there are some disadvantages to being left-handed, such as higher frequencies of work accidents. Researchers also linked left-handedness to learning disabilities, in a study published in 2013 in Brain: A Journal of Neurology.
But there's a leading theory to explain why left-handers have maintained a constant minority: the fighting hypothesis.
"The idea is that in hand-to-hand combat, or in combat with weapons, there is an evolutionary advantage to being a minority left-hander," Uomini said. "If you're left-handed, you have a surprise advantage because most people are used to fighting against right-handers."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Using the mouse in the less dominate hand makes it so much easier to take written notes with the other.
And how is a lefty at an advantage? You can’t say how, because there is no difference in the two experiences.
What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense — this persistent fraction of lefthandedness goes back 500,000 years. Fencing is a fairly new skill.
Historically, combat was engaged in by amateurs as the occasion demanded.
Even when training started to become available, the likelihood is, a lefty would train righthanded because whomever is teaching him (probably a family member) would be righthanded.
Of course left-handed is sinister. Sinister besides referring to evil also refers to left. Left handers are also gauche. Anyway, one of my granddaughters is Japanese American and appears to be left-handed. I say appears because as a child she clearly favored her left hand, but when she went to Japanese school she was required to use her right hand to write. There is only one ‘correct’ way to write kanji characters and left handers can’t do it. They have to use their right hands.
“””””Left handed people are in their right mind.”””””
Heehee -— I like that!
I’m left handed, altho I throw a ball and use a bat on the right side as my brothers taught me that way.(I’m female)
I do like the idea of eating with a fork and using a knife to cut with the right hand as I don’t have to keep switching hands to eat.
Good question. I'm not sure you would call it ambidextrous but I write/eat left handed but play sports right handed. For me Left = dexterity and right = strength?
My mother and three of us boys are left handed. In kindergarten my teacher kept putting the pencil in my right hand. When Mom found out she and Dad had a friendly visit with the teacher and convinced her that you should't try to "make" a kid use his right hand if he naturally grabs the pencil with his left. Glad she did.
Yes. We’re artistic and ambidextrous.
“In a first encounter, a lefty will not have done that. No advantage, no complete vacuum either. Real life.”
Ok fine. But only applies to first encounter.
Dad was a Southpaw. Mom was a Righty.
I’m right handed BUT left eye dominant (unusual....most have the same hand/eye dominance). The result is I shoot pool or shoot a rifle and eat Left handed. I can also write just as neatly - though more slowly - with my left hand. I absolutely can not throw left handed though.
There’s clearly a spectrum for hand dominance with some skewing far less to just one side than others do.
No second encounter for the loser, and the odds are 50-50. Fewer lefties to start. Best case scenario is, survivors of the battle remain in the same proportion.
Reading can go any old way, although most of us are used to left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Vertically written text winds up read right-to-left, top-to-bottom when turned clockwise, if written by right-handers. Horizontally written text is, well, what we have today. Literacy is probably a large reason for recent cultural dominance of righthandedness, but again, not a good explanation for its antiquity. Handed-ness just *is*, and as the article alludes, arises apparently out of four spots in the genome that happen to all arrive in the same zygote at the same time. :^)
“No second encounter for the loser, and the odds are 50-50. Fewer lefties to start. Best case scenario is, survivors of the battle remain in the same proportion.”
In a world of untrained fighters.
In a world of trained or untrained fighters, obviously.
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