Sunday, March 05, 2006
The Evolution Of Right And Left Handedness
"A study from the April issue of Current Anthropology explores the evolution of handedness, one of few firm behavioral boundaries separating humans from other animals. 'The predominant right-handedness of humans has been noted since at least the time of the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle,' write Amanda Blackburn (University of Manitoba) and Christopher Knusel (University of Bradford).
'Modern research has shown that hand preference occurs across human cultures and, through observations of ancient art, in ancient peoples.'
As researchers find new cultural behaviors among chimpanzees and other primates, language is the only other characteristic accepted to be unique to humans, and both language and handedness appear to relate to the separation of functions between the two halves of the human brain, also known as lateralization. "
technorati tags: anthropology, evolution, humans, animals, handedness, plato, aristotle, left, right, ancient, primates, chimpanzees
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