Predominant Right-handed Humans
Written by WTJ on May 24, 2009 – 9:42 am -
Paleoanthropologists at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, studied the bones of Homo heidelbergensis, ancestor of Neanderthals, and showed that right-handed humans were dominating the ancient population.
It was believed that left-handed humans were coping with right-handed world for more than half a million years, but Marina Mosquera showed that the predomination of right-handed could have been even earlier. Marina and team were investigating the teeth, known as the third hand, as an approach to determine the hand laterality. Teeth were known as the third hand because it cuts meat and other objects with stone tools by clenching onto them. The team analyzed 592 cuts mark on 163 teeth found at Sima de los Huesos cave at nothern Spain, and came to the conclusion that vast majority of the Homo heidelbergensis were right-handed. However the study of teeth is not totally reliable as the cuts of the teeth may be caused by other activities or natural wear and tear.
The commonly used approach in studying hand laterality is studying the ancient human skulls as well as the marks left on their tools. However studying the tools left on the animal bones are not reliable as the same marks can be created by lefties as well. The study of chain of hand laterality modernity is associated to the evolving of lateralised brains which leads to development of language and technology. Human is the only animal that has strong preference for performing tasks with specific hand.
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Tags: Homo heidelbergensis, left-handed, Marina Mosquera, Neanderthals, paleoanthrolopogy, right-handed, Sima de los Huesos, Skull, Spain, Tarragona, teeth, Universitat Rovira i Virgili | No Comments »
