Chimpanzees Shed New Light on Hand Preference

An anonymous reader writes "'Language skills are associated with the left side of the brain, and many scientists have said early humans developed a preference for their right hands when they acquired speech,' but Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center has a new study that links hand preference to the motor skills area of the brain rather than the language part of the brain. 'That means lefties have probably been around much longer than believed -- at least 5 million years, when scientists say humans and apes branched on the primate family tree. And evolution has purposely kept them.'"

Comments

... evolution has purposely kept them ...

[andorsch]

why? evolution is not a process of "optimisation" it is a selection process. Those who are "good enough" survive.

Obviously there is no disadvantage for being left handed, why should there be a selection against it?

Re:... evolution has purposely kept them ...

[YouHaveSnail]

And evolution has purposely kept them.

I have a big problem with the word "purposely." Evolution does not do anything "purposely," or with intention. Natural selection is a process that applies to all things that reproduce, whether it's an ape or a computer virus, just as gravity applies to all things that have mass.

"Purposely"?

[JaredOfEuropa]

And evolution has purposely kept them.

That sounds like evolution is something that deliberately picks what it thinks are good traits, and then decides to keep them around. In other words: God :)

Perhaps left-handedness doesn't have any advantages, but no drawbacks detrimental to survival either. That too would allow it to remain in the 'gene pool'.

Re:"Purposely"?

[dave420]

In the same way that gravity purposely decides what's balanced, and what will topple. You can call it God if you want, I just call it well-documented and well-researched science :)

Re:I had never heard of this

[DataCannibal]

Nothing to do with handedness, that's just the way wome are. You'll realise that as you get to know more of them :-)

Re:Evolution wants to be anthropomorphised?

[TheRaven64]

Consider the two options:

1. Create people and animals by waving your hands and saying `let there be stuff'
2. Create an incredibly simple system in which a combination of seemingly random events give rise to the evolution of consciousness.

Personally, I'd have more faith in a God who did the second - it's far more elegant - any God that opts for option 1 clearly has no sense of style. Assuming the existence of God, I'd say that belief in creationism is rather insulting to said being.

Re:What about ambidextrous?

[dJOEK]

why do mensa members feel the need to constantly plug that fact?

The fact that you're in mensa really has nothing to do with being ambidextrous.

I suggest you try therapy, since you obviously have some problems to adapt to society, and it might wipe that smug "I'm-smarter-than-you" grin of your face

And try using your capabilities for something useful, other than doing monkey tricks with your writing. they're really only feeble attempts to make other people feel inferior, and hardly impress other intelligent people.

find a cure for cancer, then come back to brag

" And evolution has purposely kept them."????

[kahei]

Evolution is not a god that sits on a mountain somewhere. It's the theory that those forms that have the greatest tendency to propagate in a given environment gradually become more frequent in that environment(*).

Seriously, this kind of bizarre 'science as voodoo' thinking is why to a lot of people creationism doesn't sound so stupid -- "God wanted there to be left handed people for his own ineffable plan" sounds about equivalent to "Evolution has kept left handed people on purpose".

It sucks and requires a certain amount of discipline, but it's better to keep science as science, a methodology for choosing between theories, than to let it become just another set of beliefs, like a religion.

(*) I know this is not a good or rigorous definition of evolution in general or biological Darwinian evolution in particular, but throw me a frickin' bone here.

Holy anthropomorphisation!

[Tim C]

Evolution hasn't purposely done anything. For whatever reason, there is not sufficient evolutionary disadvantage to being left handed for it to have died out amongst humans. Conversely, any advantage there may be to being right-handed is sufficent to make it dominant, but insufficient to wipe out left-handedness.

Evolution is a name for a process, not a thing, it doesn't do anything, on purpose or not.

For a geek/tech site, we're very loose with our terminology and language at times...