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.

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.

" 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.