Let me guess, there is a government grant involved.
One thing I’ve noticed is how differently a strange menacing dog treats you when you have a stick in your hand. Wielding sticks is an overlooked human talent. Take some kids to the woods, and the first thing they do is find a really good stick. Look at photos of primitive people; they almost always have sticks in their hands. It’s what hands are for.
Which is why the notion doesn’t work. Just about any old stick or rock is a much better weapon than the hand, however it is shaped.
It is ridiculous to think the shape of the hand as weapon could have conferred any evolutionary advantage when much more efficient weapons are lying around all over the place.
Several years ago, I was friends with a young mother. My own kids were about 8 and 10 and her son was about one.
She was a neighbor who’d come visit with me for parenting advice and one thing that I stressed was that boys and girls were different.
I told her to watch her son on walks. Before he turned two, he’d be finding sticks to carry and swing about. Girls rarely did this.
I remember when he was about a year and a half old she called me excitedly yelling, “He found a stick! He found his first stick!! I mean he made a bee-line for it! That was amazing!”
I assured her that her son was very advanced for his age. ;-)
It’s pure instinct and I’ve never known a boy who didn’t do this. Sometimes girls will, but boys are positively driven.
Sadly, I’ve known plenty of mothers who shout, “Put that down!” They don’t understand that this is a natural thing for little boys to do.