How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed

Some commenters have pointed out that we say "after our lineage split with chimpanzees," "members of our lineage after the split with chimpanzees," and "after our split from chimpanzees" at various points in this episode. Just to clear things up, humans and our extinct relatives share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and their extinct relatives. After our lineage split from this common ancestor, we call our group "hominins." Living chimpanzees also have their own separate evolutionary history since that shared common ancestor.

I was actually born left handed But I had a stroke when I was very young which paralyzed the left side of my body meaning I had to grow up right handed instead. My favorite joke is “ I’m ambidextrous, I just can’t show you right now”

Being a Leftie is fine for me until I went to school where their armchairs only have a right arm rest.

As a left handed person, I think living in a right handed world forces you to be a lot more ambidextrous than the opposite for right handed people.

You might be interested in how handedness has affected architecture. You will find that in medieval castles and other fortresses that have stairways , those stairways hug the walls such that upon ascending the walls are invariably on the right hand side. This is because it inhibits the movements of right-handed invading swordsmen, giving the (also right handed) defender above an advantage with greater room to swing his sword. Now, a lefty attacking would nullify a lot of that advantage, but the defender would still have the height & weight advantage of striking downwards.

one of my teachers used to call me and other lefties a "silver surfer" because whenever we wrote an essay our hand would be covered in graphite

I appreciate that some of our best old evidence of this is from people basically punching themselves in the face on accident.

About 40 years ago I worked at a company that made woodgrain trim for Jeep station wagons. It was bent by hand . I noticed that if a lefthanded person learned to make a part on one side of the car he could immediately make the same part for the other side. But a right handed person had to learn that side the same way as any other part.

Most of my family members are either lefties or ambidextrous. We have always been very careful of who we sit next to during gatherings like Christmas and birthdays, so that we don't constantly bump into each others when eating. We have a lefties and a righties side of the table. I only very realized that it was an abnormal thing to think of. I went out with a group of friends and asked if we should organize the table according to hand preferences. They were all right handed lol

"70% to 95% of us to be exact"... i chuckled

If somebody doesn’t say “oh hey your left-handed, didn’t know that” are you even left-handed ?

I used to run a roofing crew. I would purposely hire a lefty because when coordinated with a righty things went quicker and smoother. Things like cutting off extra shingles would be done by the person more comfortable at that particular end of the roof. Sounds weird, but it helped.

I’m friends with a pair of twins, one right and one left handed. This is called mirroring and occurs when the developing egg splits after a certain time. Identical twins (both right handed)divide before then. I wondered if it’s possible that some lefties could be the remaining twin after an early foetal loss. Often embryos lost very early on are not even noticed as more pregnancies end spontaneously at such an early stage. Just a little pondering of mine.

Took a fencing course in college, was one of the best in the class. Finally went up against the other lefty. We engaged and backed off perplexed. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to.

Leftie advantages: You always know what to say when the teacher asks a fact about yourself, so you get to sit down quicker.

Funny story: i worked with a guy who applied for a grant from an organization that supports and recognizes left-handed people...he wrote out this multi-page essay about how he wasn't even left-handed and essentially just wrote this essay out of sheer boredome... they ended up giving him the grant because....he literally was the only person to submit an essay for this grant!

Some of us reached perfection earlier than others and remained left-handed.

There was a family I knew growing up where a lefty man had married a lefty woman. And they had customized their house to accommodate this: the door hinges, doorknob turns, the refrigerator door, the drawstrings for the blinds etc. Spending time there felt like living in an Escher painting.

Footnote: left-handedness had survival value in trench warfare of WWI - soldiers throwing improvised explosives in the dark with their left hand were less likely to be picked off by snipers (who would routinely shoot to the wrong side of the glowing fuse).

It all started when a guy realized that he made a mistake. Frustrated that he was not right... He just left. ^^