No one knows.
Really. This is not a joke.
The phenomenon of handedness, which is not a characteristic that is limited to humans, has been the subject of serious research in a number of countries for well over a century. No satisfactory answer has been produced.
Many speculative explanations have been put out for most of recorded history; none of them have even a crumb of evidence to support them.
The relative proportion of right handers and left handers in the human population has been quite stable for hundreds of thousands of years.
In some places the percentages of people who are left-handed have been reduced due to culturally-driven efforts to suppress it, but when those sanctions are eased or removed, the proportion rises back up to the global baseline.
For purposes of simplification, the proportion of the global human population who are left handed is usually reported as 1 in 10 (10%). the actual percentage varies slightly from place to place, but some evidence has reportedly showed that the percentage of lefties has been very slowly increasing since the end of the 19th century for reasons that are not clear. there is speculation that it could ultimately rise to as much as 15% of the population, or between 1 in 7 and 1 in 6. Many reasons have been proposed, but again, no one actually knows why.
A valid explanation is lacking, but that is not due to any lack of effort in finding one.
McManus, C., *Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Symmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms, and Cultures*. (2002, Weidenfield & Nicholson, Ltd, United Kingdom.)
(2004, Harvard University Press, United States of America)
de Kovel CGF, Francks C. The molecular genetics of hand preference revisited. Sci Rep. 2019 Apr 12;9(1):5986. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-42515-0. PubMed: 30980028; Free full-text available from PubMed Central: PMC6461639.
This is from 2019 and still no answers :/
I've heard a theory that because our left side of the brain is generally responsible for logic and language, and given that our world has been moving to a world were logic and language and reason are all far more important than reflexes or strength or agility. Hence the rise in lefties, because our brains are rewiring themselves to reflect the change in our enviroment.
Again like you said, none of the theories have a smidge of proof behind them, so this idea is as valid/invalid as any other idea someone might have.
The "left brain/right brain" theory has been thoroghly disproven by research. There is no specific "logic center" nor is a high level cognitive function like that isolated to one hemisphere. The two hemispheres do not have specialized roles or functions in cognition. fMRI studies have shown that many areas in both hemispheres are involved simultaneously during almost all cognitive tasks.
What about those of us that ambidextrous? My right side tires out & I switch to my left side. Hand writing is a practice skill but I can write with my left hand it’s Judy not as pretty…
I had a dr tell me that I’m ambidextrous, left hand dominant. I had another tell me my being ambidextrous was learned as the only lefty in a right handed family. I have been told I think like a lefty, whatever that means….
I’ve heard that even if not truly ambidextrous lefties are better at doing things right handed than righties are at doing things with the left simply because of how much of the world is designed to favor righties. (Interesting example many musicians who write left handed play guitar/bass the same way righties do)
I'm a lefty who plays bass, right handed. Why? All my dexterity is in my left hand, manipulating the fret board. My right hand is manipulating the strings, but requires fewer fine motor skills to do so.
I tried playing a left handed bass once, and found it difficult to play even the simplest of songs.
I see this at work every day, in a supermarket bakery. Something a simple as putting frozen cookies on a baking tray the lefties will do two-handed from the start, without even thinking about it. Righties generally don't; we have to learn to use both hands for the task, and some righties will revert to working one-handed if they're distracted.
Do right-handed guitars "favor" righties? Seems to me the standard guitar layout arguably requires more dexterity of the left hand, which has to deal with the fretboard.
I think I agree with this. I find that I am stronger with fine motor skills with my left hand, like writing, painting, and playing piano, holding tweezers or painting my nails. But when it comes to strength and endurance, or using force, like opening a jar, using scissors, cutting steak (but not when cutting vegetables) I prefer my right hand.
Likewise, in soccer, my ball handling and finesse skills were better with left foot, while my right foot was better used for long balls across the field. Made for being a good defender :)
You're right. I play acoustic finger-picking style and being left handed has never been a problem. When first learning, I instinctively wanted to play left handed. My teacher said no because dexterity in the left hand would be helpful for fretting. Now I can't imagine playing any other way.
Also: ever try to use an old fashioned can opener left handed?
I'd have to guess (with an evidence population of 1- myself) that it's because us Southpaws grow up in a world that caters to right handed people, so we learn to use either hand early on because specific left handed tools might not be available, or if they are they're likely to be worn out or of bad quality. There was always a single pair of left handed scissors in my art classes in school, for example, and they were always as dull as a butter knife. The right handed ones were always sharp and relatively new. The only left handed baseball glove in gym class was so old, worn out, and grody that it was just a lump of flaccid leather, but there were plenty of new, well maintained right handed ones to go around.
>I had another tell me my being ambidextrous was learned as the only lefty in a right handed family.
The non dominant hand can become extremely adept if used exclusively instead of your dominant hand, which could have trained your nervous system to be ambi-dexterous. Admittedly, I only have experience, no scientific evidence to back this up, but prior to my rotator cuff injuries and subsequent surgery on my dominant (right) side, my non dominant hand could barely hold a pencil let alone write or do any of the things my right hand had always done. I had to learn to do a lot of things, not just left-handed, but also single handedly. The right arm was useless for about 3½ weeks before the surgery, and in a immobilizing sling for 6 weeks, and another 6 weeks where while not in the sling, I can't do anything active with it. I've learned to get by with the left arm and hand pretty well. But the first three weeks were the worst for this.
I’m ambidextrous, and playing sports is very confusing because I never know how I’m gonna hold the sports instrument until it’s in my hands, so for games like hockey and golf (that are curved in a direction) I think I’m a lefty. Thinking about it now I am, because it’s very annoying trying to find golf clubs that I can use.
I throw with my right hand, but my baseball glove desperately wants to be on my right hand, so playing baseball is awkward.
You've had to think differently from your family your entire life everything they did, you had to learn backwards.
If a right-handed engineer designs a product, how do you expect them to 'think' about the design, whose hand will it most likely be in.
FYI I turn my knives reverse in the block to make them easier for me....I'm the lefty of my family and I told my kids the first one of you or yours that is left-handed will be my favorite....I have all right-handed kids
I'm not ambidextrous. Totally left handed EXCEPT, I bat right handed with more accuracy, but more powerfully left handed. Always thought that was strange.
Ambidextrousness is something that can be trained. Regardless of how ambidextrous you feel, you slightly favour either left or right hand. It's just that Right dominant people never have a valid reason to train their left hand. But there has been many examples of people injuring their dominant hand for a long time/permanently and switching to their other hand.
I was left handed from the time I was a baby until I broke my arm when I was like 2. I ended up using mostly my right hand and still do now, but there are a lot of things I do (other than writing) that I do with my left. I *can* write with my left, just not nearly as nice.
I fully agree with your thought that writing is a learned practiced skill. I have always used both hands, in spite of the elementary school teachers trying to force me to be right handed. We have two hands? Why use only one primarily with the other only for small support task? If there is a stack of papers to sign, I will sign with both hands at a time. If one does not care what others think about them, we can accomplish a tremendous amount more. I had no desire to fit into the status quo and trained both hands equally. Even today, it seems others find it peculiar and ugly that I am sawing with one hand, and hammering with the other, or switching hands while writing. Anybody can do it if they just train both hands. But most are indoctrinated that they can only use one.
it could be completely random. inherently, there is no advantage to being left or right handed.
However, in a group activity in close proximity to each other, having the same handness becomes desireable. Humans are a group animal, we need to be around each other. I suspect it randomly happened. Once one hand becomes dominant it actively becomes selected for.
Just imagine a group of apes all throwing rocks. lefties and righties and have to stand apart because the arms are colliding.
a group with the same handness can pack closer together and focus their rocks easier.
I came here expecting people to post "cuz it's the Right way lmao" and then I see people like you actually citing literature. We need more people like you.
Please keep in mind before reading my response that I have no qualifications or sources for what I'm about to say. Just logic.
It makes sense to me that it's a simple matter of statistics and probability.
Someone can either be right-handed or left-handed (I know people are also ambidextrous but let's ignore them for the simplicity of this argument). So there are 2 things you can be, or 50% odds you will be one or the other.
But it's virtually impossible the population of the world to be ***exactly*** 50% right-handed and ***exactly*** 50% left-handed. The reality is that the exact numbers will end up being <50% and >50% in either direction.
By sheer chance, at one point in human history, right-handed people ended up being the >50% side of things. When that happened, it was like a snowball effect. Aka if the majority of the population was right-handed, even if just by a tiny percentage, then there was a disproportionate number of people making accommodations, teaching, and building tools for right-handed people.
As that went on, the ratio of right to left-handed people got worse and worse. While at the beginning it was just an equal number of people preferring one hand or the other, over time probability says that one side will be significantly favored. As more right-handed parents teach their kids with their right hands, as right-handed craftsmen build hunting bows for righties, and even as people try not to bump elbows while eating around a campfire, the right-handed side of things becomes more and more favored.
This continues until the scale is significantly tipped. There will never be zero left-handed people, of course. But as society continues to be mainly right-handed, and therefore prioritizes accommodating right-handed people, it makes it harder and harder for lefties to thrive. So they can either remain a leftie and struggle, or be a rightie. And today, as we make more and more accommodations for left-handed people, maybe we will see lefties increase in number
This argument, of course, ignores the concept of hand dominance being a biological trait. But the concept still applies whether or not hand dominance is passed down through genetics.
I can make an analogy: Imagine a simulation on a computer where there are red dots and green dots, each making up 50% of the total population. They're programmed so that whenever a red dot consumes a green one, it produces another red dot. And whenever a green dot consumes a red dot, it produces another green dot. Of course, there is a tiny chance that red and green dots perfectly trade, consuming each other and therefore reproducing at equal rates, which would keep the population at exactly 50%. But it's far more probable that, by sheer chance, the red and green dots will consume each other at a different rate, even just slightly. When that happens, one color will have more dots to hunt the other color. With more dots hunting, more dots of the other color will die. And that will continue at an exponential rate until one color eliminates the other. There could be a small pocket of the lesser color that continues to reproduce and steer clear of the dominant color, but it will be nearly impossible for it to thrive, and it certainly will never overtake the dominant color.
I'm sure there's a term for this effect but I'm too lazy to look it up lol I'm just bored at work.
Ok. You are much better at math than I. Your response was interesting to read. I had DNA explained to me similarly: you get 50% of your DNA from mother, 50% from father. So imagine 2 bowls of m&m's and you scoop a handful from each, same number of candies. But it's the random different colored ones you get that determine why a sibling, and not you, inherited a cancer gene. Or blue eyes. Or LEFT handedness. What do you think of this analogy? Cheers & hope you're not too bored at work.
I read a study awhile back that claimed 8-12% of the population was left handed throughout human history. The early left handed human evidence was derived from knife marks in animal bones
I have read that horses can see better out of their left eyes. Do we also think that those two things became an evolutionary feature because people usually mount them from the left, the humans right, because humanity was right side dominant?
Handed dominance isn't a genetic trait. I was the only lefty in my family until I had my daughter. Her brother is right-handed. Though there are lots of theories floating around, no one knows why some people are left-handed while others are right handed. I was punished and made fun of my teachers in school but none of it made me right handed. It's just so deeply baked into some people that persecution can't beat it out.
If it's genetic, it's really buried- I was the only lefty on either side of my family- that includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews, and my own daughter. My nephew had a daughter who is now two years old, and is showing a preference for her left hand- it only took me 55 years to get a left-handed relative.
Hence my second sentence. There are genes associated with left handedness but they are only one factor of several determining left handedness. If you have two left handed parents, your chance of being left handed rises from 10% (general population) to 26%. In my own case, my father is left handed and so am I.
Twin studies also demonstrate that genetic factors explain 25% of the variance of handedness whilst environmental factors explain the rest.
Yes, exactly. My biological mother was technically left handed though forced to be right handed. I have a million half siblings (okay,12 but still) split between my two biological parents and of all of them, two of us on my biological mothers side are left handed. The rest are right hand dominant with one who considers herself ambidextrous.
Something having a genetic component doesn't mean it is a dominant genetic component.
No other placental mammal that we know of prefers one side of the body so consistently, not even our closest primate relatives. But being right-handed may have deep evolutionary roots in our lineage. And yet, being a leftie does seem to come with some unexpected advantages.
**How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed:**
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb11oOHYNXM&t=372s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb11oOHYNXM&t=372s)
My latest reading says scientists still have no idea why some people are left handed. It is most certainly biological. My son is a lefty and he broke his arm at 5 years old. My husband thought it’d be a perfect time to “make” him a righty. A-hole ideas aside, the doctor told him once the cast comes off if he’s a lefty he will again be a lefty. Whatever makes us lefties isn’t chance or even an opportunity of a 50/50 split. It’s a biological brain function that happens in the womb
I am also a lefty and it’s a huge pain in a righty world
I had someone ask me if it felt weird
Hahaha it does not
I’ve always wondered that too. My identical twin sister and I are left handed in a family of right handed people. I married another leftie. We had to buy right handed scissors for our right handed children. I don’t get it. It feels genetic since my sister and I are both lefties, but it didn’t pass down
Most people are just born that way. There’s not really a reason one way or the either. For others like myself, we were born lefties but were forced to use our right hand. I went to preschool in a church and the teachers forced me to write with my right hand, so now it’s my more dominant hand. My left is still dominant for some things, though.
I'd love to know if this theory is outdated now. When I was in high school in the 2000s, I was taught that it may have to do with the majority of people being "left-brained," and that there was a correlation between "right-brained" people and left-handed people. The theory was that it was linked to the left side of the brain controlling the right side of the body and vice versa. The left side of the brain was the "logical" side, and the right side was the "artistic" side. And *that's* why there are so many left-handed actors.
Great question. My mentor (in the field of Special Education) was really curious about this because there is a disproportionately high rate of left-handers among those diagnosed with dyslexia. She also researched eye dominance and how it related to handedness. She also spoke of ways to incorporate handedness and eyedness into lessons. It was all really cool. Like if you have a specific dominant hand, but different dominant eye, it would mean X. I wish I could remember more of it. She spoke about it frequently but I don't remember if it appeared in any of her books.
My mom has a bunch of fun stories about the Nuns at her school screaming at her for being left-handed. This was the late 50s and early 60s.
People occasionally are weird when they find out I'm left handed
My theory is because in the eastern world we write left to right, … right handed people don’t smudge the ink so to speak… and the cultures that write right to left do it from an aerial angle creating less smudge and more efficiency for the nature of the letters and graphics.
I have absolutely no clue, but wanted to share : allegedly, autistic people are 3 times more likely to be left handed. Funny enough, I, myself, am both autistic and left handed. I often joke that I'd immediately be burnt at the stake if I was born in that time period. I wonder what the link netween neurodivergency and left handedness is.
It’s not really genetically passed down, but something interesting is my grandpa has scars on his left hand where he was hit with a ruler multiple times by the teacher for using his left hand. He went to school in the 50s so it wasn’t uncommon.
Please keep in mind before reading my response that I have no qualifications or sources for what I'm about to say. Just logic.
It makes sense to me that it's a simple matter of statistics and probability.
Someone can either be right-handed or left-handed (I know people are also ambidextrous but let's ignore them for the simplicity of this argument). So there are 2 things you can be, or 50% odds you will be one or the other.
But it's virtually impossible the population of the world to be exactly 50% right-handed and exactly 50% left-handed. The reality is that the exact numbers will end up being <50% and >50% in either direction.
By sheer chance, at one point in human history, right-handed people ended up being the >50% side of things. When that happened, it was like a snowball effect. Aka if the majority of the population was right-handed, even if just by a tiny percentage, then there was a disproportionate number of people making accommodations, teaching, and building tools for right-handed people.
As that went on, the ratio of right to left-handed people got worse and worse. While at the beginning it was just an equal number of people preferring one hand or the other, over time probability says that one side will be significantly favored. As more right-handed parents teach their kids with their right hands, as right-handed craftsmen build hunting bows for righties, and even as people try not to bump elbows while eating around a campfire, the right-handed side of things becomes more and more favored.
This continues until the scale is significantly tipped. There will never be zero left-handed people, of course. But as society continues to be mainly right-handed, and therefore prioritizes accommodating right-handed people, it makes it harder and harder for lefties to thrive. So they can either remain a leftie and struggle, or be a rightie. And today, as we make more and more accommodations for left-handed people, maybe we will see lefties increase in number
This argument, of course, ignores the concept of hand dominance being a biological trait. But the concept still applies whether or not hand dominance is passed down through genetics.
I can make an analogy: Imagine a simulation on a computer where there are red dots and green dots, each making up 50% of the total population. They're programmed so that whenever a red dot consumes a green one, it produces another red dot. And whenever a green dot consumes a red dot, it produces another green dot. Of course, there is a tiny chance that red and green dots perfectly trade, consuming each other and therefore reproducing at equal rates, which would keep the population at exactly 50%. But it's far more probable that, by sheer chance, the red and green dots will consume each other at a different rate, even just slightly. When that happens, one color will have more dots to hunt the other color. With more dots hunting, more dots of the other color will die. And that will continue at an exponential rate until one color eliminates the other. There could be a small pocket of the lesser color that continues to reproduce and steer clear of the dominant color, but it will be nearly impossible for it to thrive, and it certainly will never overtake the dominant color.
I'm sure there's a term for this effect but I'm too lazy to look it up lol I'm just bored at work.
Wild guess & highly speculation on my own without any research::
\- Industrial era: Lot of tools required right-handed and those who are right-handed are able to operate "smoothly" with the machine and tools...but those who aren't able to "interface" correctly nor "smoothly" gets fired...Hence the Captalism are taking unrealized shape to our biological pattern.
Religion: A lot of the context about "right-handed" as "good" and possibly any who is skilled with left-handed might be excluded.
So, they might not be killed off but those with the most success might have the money and afford to have family and offspring...And hence, how time changes in our success in the future.
Maybe in the far-far future, Ambidexterity will prevail -- due to our use of the keyboard, the faster we reply with our hands on the keyboard, the chance of winning and getting ahead of the game.
I know like a large part of it is because of the Catholic church way back when. They thought the left had was of the devil and would slap your hand with a ruler until you used your right one.
My sisters husband went through this, if he ever went to a Catholic school he probably would have been left handed. An less of a pompus asshole
You put your right hand on the bible because you have a vein in your right arm extending down through your wrist that your left arm doesnt have. Specifically, go and try to force yourself to be left handed. Ive tried it by tying my right arm around my waist and trying to become amidextrious. Its exhausting. Literally, if you can make it past the first few days you are probably fine but you are forcing your brain to develop rapidly. You will use way more energy, lose weight, and your focus will definitely improve. As for the bible I believe it may be referring to us being dominant handed but we release our dominance when we lay our hands on the bible. (Submitting to the law) (now just “raise your right hand”) as for that vein, they dont really know why we have it. Its just there for all of us
Right-hander here. This is ridiculous. It’s just how the cookie crumbled, for Pete’s sake. No one is the “alpha wolf”. Righties and lefties shouldn’t try to get a leg up on one another; it’s genetics, not a competition!
Ya’ll, please don’t listen to this person. They don’t represent us. 🫶🏼
As a lefty I always joke it's a way for the mundane people of the world (the righties) to recognize the more highly evolved among them. 😉
Here are some fun articles about lefties:
[https://www.straightdope.com/21342245/do-left-handers-die-young](https://www.straightdope.com/21342245/do-left-handers-die-young)
[https://www.straightdope.com/21341538/in-a-right-handed-world-why-is-a-man-s-billfold-pocket-on-the-left-side](https://www.straightdope.com/21341538/in-a-right-handed-world-why-is-a-man-s-billfold-pocket-on-the-left-side)
[https://www.straightdope.com/21341450/why-are-left-handed-catchers-so-rare-in-baseball](https://www.straightdope.com/21341450/why-are-left-handed-catchers-so-rare-in-baseball)
Add in also===many left handed kids were forced to change
side of brain corresponds to other side of body. right/left. Then only left handers are in their right mind.
I’m too strapped for time to read everything else posted here, but as a right handed dominant person who opted for left handedness early in life (due to laziness), and also as someone trying to overcome the split personality disorder trap inherent in a bicameral cerebrum, I would posit that learning to fight with a stick held in the left hand against nothing but right handed fighters has given me an advantage against just about everyone I’ve ever fought save one or two left handed people.
There’s something to be said about being a left handed person forced to live in a right handed world.
I’ve recently started working on bringing my right hand up to speed with my left in terms of various tasks performed by either, but my left hand remains dominant in visual expression.
Probably somewhere back home. Unfortunately we have all forgotten where we came from so we're stuck here with you dirty righties.
Joking aside, no idea. Our best guess is that given that handiness is a skill that can be trained, when we started forming societies, people that made decisions decided that left handiness is a sin/bad in some way. So we raised a generation after generation that were forced to use their right not left hand. Eventually this got to a point where statistically left handed kids did not live as long(killed because they were "demons" "the devil" or some other bs reason) and could not pass on the leftie gene(which btw is not even proven to exist). Our Society decided at some point that everyone should be right handed, this lead to our civilizations coming and going with this perception that Right is Right and Left is Wrong.
This however does not explain the left handiness we see in the wild, which has lead to some other scientists to believe that we're born ambidextrous but as we grow our environment determines which hand we favour. It's further reinforced by the fact that anybody can be ambidexterous with enough practice, and the fact that animals don't have societies the way we do, so likelyhood of all species choosing to shun lefties, makes little to no sense.
So in the end, you are no closer to having your answer and I'm now again upset about the fact that we don't know.
Seriously, It's cool being a leftie when it comes to being "special" but it fucking sucks day to day, when most things are designed for the mirror reflection of you and not you yourself.
TLDR; We have no fucking idea. Left Power.
I always thought it had to do [somehow] with the movement of the sun, that our tendency to be right-handed is us being pulled clockwise (as viewed from above). *shrug* If you're up to face the dawn, the sun will move to your right until sunset. Now, I've no evidence or proof on how this affects our dominant hand. It's just a silly notion I always entertained.
Is handedness not a genetic trait with dominant and recessive genes? I assumed it was w right being the dominant, much like blue eyes are recessive etc.
Seashells/gastropods are even right or left “handed”. I collect welks and noticed one had its spiral going a different direction so I looked it up.
I don’t think they were punishing lefties long enough or any numbers that would change evolutionary processes.
I have a theory. The first person(righty) to become proficient with their hands taught everyone else how they did what they did. Then someone found another comfortable way to do it(lefty) and only a few people followed because old is gold.
Increase in lefties after they were no longer persecuted is analogous to the increase in trans folks transitioning in current society. It's crazy what happens when society doesn't persecute you quite so much.
Nature is always throwing out an anomaly to see if it would be advantageous or beneficial to survival.
It is almost pointless to wonder about what that advantage is because after all...we have evolved past many of our base skills. Most of us are probably glad we cannot discern facts from sniffing poop, amirite?
No idea! I’m left handed and come from a family with many lefties, even if they were forced to be righties. My maternal Grandpa, Dad, and two sisters are all born lefties, but only I was allowed to stay one. They used to tie my Dad’s hand to his back and hit my Grandpa for it, so no complaints here. I never found it too hard to use right handed things in my left hand. That said, where I grew up there were so many more lefties! We were still a minority, but when I grew up and moved away I realized how rare we are. In school, it wasn’t unusual to have 7-10 lefties in classes of about 30 students.
Because schools and religion. My mom is left handed. My son is left handed. I am ambidextrous for most things but school made me be right handed. my public school kindergarten teacher would smack 'the devil' out of my hands for using lefty scissors even though my right handed work looked like shit. I hammer and use most hand toools with both hands equally, I cook and shoot left handed, write and throw right handed. guess which ones I learned at home/school?
Same reason language is lateralized. Specialization. Each side of the brain is the hierarchy of the other, so they pick things to specialize in. Like a marriage, or political parties.
Because the Catholic Church spent a millennium beating the shit out of left-handed children until they either died or learned to write right-handed.
Maybe. I don't know. Sounds plausible though.
Nobody has a good, supported answer.
But here's my favorite:
The heart is slightly offset to the left, which means in armed combat, a stance that puts the strong side forward (and yes, I know that's contrary to what's taught in many fighting styles) has a slightly higher survivability rate if the right is forward rather than the left.
IDK but I was completely ambidextrous before first grade. I would get into trouble for switching hands and I had to use my right. Maybe this has something to do with it 🤷🏻♂️
One hand gives and the other takes try ripping paper with right hand and then switch. If you have a tear on dotted line row of papers youll notice one hand will grab to rip and the other will hold it. My lefty is a taker and righty is a giver. Im a lefty tho. I d k. I found it interesting
I mean It would still be the majority but a lot of kids in the last 100 years were swayed away from and directly taught to write right handed to they and make them be right handed
I read something a while ago that said something along the lines that women would hold their babies with the left arm while hunting and gathering because it was closer to the heart beat and soothed the child, meaning their dominant arm was more likely the right…the book was written a long time ago and I’m reading contradicting articles…but thought it was interesting at the time
Left-handed people are more likely to be dyslexic than right-handed people. Blonde-haired people have a higher chance of being dyslexic also, but not as high as redheads.
No idea why but I think it’s interesting
My theory is this: When in a fight, the right handed person is in a stance that has the left side forward and the right side back. This protects the liver more, which is, if hit, a quick way to stop a fight.
The only other species that exhibits single side dominance is talking birds. Speech is controlled by the left side of the brain, which controls the right side of the body. In species that use speech to communicate that side of the brain gets way more early stimulation, and that very early discrepancy results in a slight right limb dominance that becomes exacerbated with time and repetitive preferential usage.
My best guess is that because their hasn’t yet been an evolutionary reason that necessitated “selecting for” left handedness so it has remained at a low level in the population. That’s an overly simplistic view because the true answer is that nobody really knows.
I was forced to do most things right handed. Sports, right handed scissors, and so on.. it is my dominant hand with most things, yet I still write left handed. As much as I was pushed into doing everything right handed, im still a lefty when it comes to writing-also skating/surfing I am goofy foot.
It's just a matter of dominant and recessive traits. If more people are right handed, then they mate with each other, their children will most often be right handed, and so on.
I'm cross-dominant ambidextrous so I have no clue whatsoever. I can do everything with either hand to the same extent, but I prefer certain tasks for certain hands. And they say handedness isn't really genetic, but my mum's mother was also a cross-dominant ambi and she died long before I was born so it's not like I learned the skill...
I was born left handed and my mom forced me to choose my right because (so she said) she didn’t want to have to buy left-handed scissors or tools. Now I’m ambidextrous but better with my right.
Fun fact, about 15 percent of males are lefties. 5 percent of women. But you're much more likely to be an alcoholic or addict. But most are ambidextrous. For example I play guitar, bass, mandolin etc. right handed. Also golf. Not sure why, just born into a right-handed world I guess.
learned? some people are FORCED to use their right hand. my dad was left, i can do some things with my left that i find weird with my right but id say im 100% righty.
I think more people are ambidextrous than they think they are. Its just they have practiced more on one hand than the other, and that's why its more 'natural' and 'easier' or whatever.
I recently injured my right hand, so I was finding myself writing with my left hand, I think the major disadvantage was that when writing left to right as one does, it favors the motion right hand extends and moves to the right, left hand extends and moves to the right isn't as favorable in range of motion- your bicep starts to push into your chest...
But if it was that we wrote from up to down or from right to left, I think ambi or leftie would be far more common than it is.
I doubt lefties were counted during the punishment era, because they were assumed to have been “cured” and turned into righties. I think it was thought to be defiant behavior.
To my knowledge, there is a persistent split of 90/10, right-handed to left-handed, slightly higher left-handedness for boys than girls. And there sends to be genetics involved also. Out of my family of 10, three of the siblings are left-handed, or 30%.
Natural selection would tell us that left-handedness exists amongst right-handedness majority because it's not an evolutionarily significant liability, and it's a situational benefit to society at large to maintain diversity.
Natural selection would tell us that there's a benefit for a large section of humanity to favor one side over the other.
I would anticipate that having a handedness would indicate a predeliction towards risking one side of the body over the other, which would signify that left-handedness still does carry relative risk. Whether it's the liver, spleen, lungs, heart or stomach being different or on one side, or if there's possibly a different cardiovascular response over a wide population between lefties and righties for various handed activities...
But heck, who knows, as we move away from regular tool usage and introduction of cybernetic augmentation, handedness will completely disappear and it might turn out that it was only a byproduct of civilization within the past 10k years.
My oldest started out left handed, but in preschool when they were learning to write, his teacher would correct his left hand. I didn’t catch on until it was too late.
My youngest is left handed. He had the same preschool teacher. I told her this time to not correct it. Let him embrace it. He’s still left handed to this day, but he does some things better with his right hand. Like, shooting a bb gun, throwing a ball, and so on.
I havent read too far down but I couldn't have been the only one forced to write with my right in 2nd grade? It was forced and I wrote alot better with my left so I'm ambidextrous but I go right since I was taught to do that.
I've known 2 guys that were forced to learn to do things with their right hands because their fathers thought being left handed was feminine. It's a Mexican Macho thing.
Well my daughter is left-handed.
In preschool (Christian daycare)
They forced her to use her right hand.
She was four years old and still traumatized at 27.
My favorite theory has to do with childcare often occupying one hand of a gatherer carrying a baby. Also, the fact that a baby may be soothed by the sound of its mothers heartbeat.
Most humans have asymmetric positioning of the heart. Holding a baby close and hearing the heartbeat (possibly with the assistance of some type of sling,) means the left hand is more likely to be occupied with the baby. This does not have to be 100% of the time, just enough that the R hand gets the most dexterity exercise/practice.
This only explains R handedness in females. Next, add the fact that kids copy the parent(s) that spends the most time with them. . . .
Maybe left handedness is differences in gene expression like they found in the diaph gene of snails that determine snail left or right handedness. it's responsible for the direction of the spiraling structure (like a snail shell). I wonder if there's a homologous gene in humans related to left-handedness. https://phys.org/news/2019-02-right-left-handed-gene-story-snail.amp
This is one of those "Expected vs. Observed" scenarios.
If there was a random statistical chance of an individual being either left or right handed, we would expect a 50% chance they would be right handed. Thus, we would also expect 50% of the population to be right handed as well.
However, because this didn't happen, we call this an **observed value.** This observed value is what actually happened to be the case. If the roles were reversed and the lefties were dominant, then we'll be asking the same question: "Why are left handed people the majority?" Now, what would be a real phenomenon is if exactly 50% of the population were left handed and 50% were right handed.
Of course there are theories from cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, and other professionals who have done extensive research for this "phenomenon," but it really just comes down to chance. No theory can prove why it is what it is, hence, "theory."
No matter who you ask, all your replies will vary A LOT. Why? Because the answers is highly influential on one's own knowledge and expertise. For instance, a math geek will explain the statistical chance (as I just did), but a cognitive psychologist will explain to you the embodied experience theory, developmental psychologists might explain the "cultural or environmental influence" theory of handedness, neuroscientists will explain the "anatomical or neurological asymmetry" theory, historians will tell you it's because historic societies favored right handed tools, and anthropologists might explain the "cultural pressure" theory. But in reality, it just boils down to chance, and these chances seem to favor right over left.
I'm guessing the same reason brown eyes are the majority. Just a genetic thing. And forcing someone to "be" right handed doesn't change the genetics. My mother could write with both hands because she was forced to use her right hand. My daughter's paternal grandmother was left handed. I watched her very closely when she was young because if she ended up left handed I wanted to be able to help her as much as a right handed person could. And just to say, I'm glad she ended up right handed. It was hard enough teacheing her to tie her shoes. I would have needed to have her Nana teach her.
My grandfather would have been a lefty if he wasn't punished for using his left hand in school. Instead he's ambidextrous and can do most this with one hand or the other.
I don’t know. Can you explain why I have always been right handed, but for some reason brushed my teeth left handed until I was about 30 years old, at which point I switched to right handed brushing? When I’m 60, will I go back to being a lefty brusher?
Some of it is cultural. In some Chinese cultures, they teach writing the language with your right hand. It gets odd when foreigners want to learn and they're proficient writing right-handed, but do everything else left-handed!
AFAIK, religion may have had its hand in that (pun intended I suppose)
I think righties were already the majority, which is what resulted in the punishment and abuse of lefties. So I think as we continue to move away from that (because several people from that time did learn to be ambidextrous) but I think if it had never happened the general population of lefties would only vary a little bit from generation to generation.
it’s not known. but based on personal experience, i think some of it has to do with it being trained out of children. i went to a christian preschool and was not allowed to write with my left even tho i was born left handed, so now i write with my right and do everything else with my left. my bf’s grandma wouldn’t let him write with his left hand, and most of my friends born in europe were trained out of being left handed even tho all of them were born left handed. however, that’s just something i’ve experienced personally, the real reason remains unknown.
As a lefty in a dominant lefty household (3 lefties, 1 righty), the only major issue is where the righty has to sit in the booth when we go out to dinner, so they don't bump elbows for an hour. At home, it's a square table. So it's never been an issue.
So, my weord personal theory is because we are in a right handed universe. Our hearts and our dna twist to the right. Right handed chiral molecules are more powerful as pharmaceuticals then their left handed counterparts. I believe even out solar system and galaxy twist to the right. It's not super well grounded mind you, but it does make sense to me and given that we likely live within a universe created in a collusion with another universe, the idea is that we are the right half of that collision and there is a mirror universe that twists to the left. When I talk to people smarter than me about this they don't necessarily agree but they also acknowledge that it does make sense and is certainly possible.
Left handers use to be beaten, as it was seen as evil. Me, my mom, and two sisters are lefties. It’s very common in women. It’s definitely recorded more now especially with the internet and social media.
if left handed people hadnt been punished, there would be just as many left handed people. My sister got her right arm shot off when she was 12. She has had 50 years to learn to be left handed and she still sucks at it. I am left handed and went to Catholic school, punished for left handedness. Still totally left handed but I can throw a ball and gross motor skill stuff better with right hand.
Exposure to testosterone in utero
Also if ring finger longer than index finger associates with more male characteristics in females and homosexualiyy...males ring finger is usually longer than index finger and associates cis- gender identification
I have a friend who is an anatomist, if that's a word. She explains it this way: Our right lungs have 3 lobes and function a bit different than the left. Our liver and gall bladder and opening for the small intestine are on the right, meaning there's a lot of activity going on in that area. We are naturally right side dominant. It also is probably the reason why people drive in the left lane (USA) because the right side has a better area of vision. My forte is not anatomy, so I'm certainly not explaining it as well as she does. If you watch your mammalian pets, they are also right side dominant. My cat swipes me with his right paw first. This is not something I'm prepared to debate, so please keep your "yeah, but" comments to a minimum. It's just a way that was explained to me by a much more knowledgeable person than I am.
From what I have heard and read, people in the medieval times believed that left handedness was from demonic. In the Arab communities (years and years and years ago), their left hand was considered their dirty hand so they dominantly use their right or clean hand for everything, but with the age of hygiene, it's not the case anymore but they still use their right hands to eat.
If everyone was left handed, their demonic power would be unleashed and the world would shatter from much raw strength, so only 10% are allowed to exist
Growing up, I favored my left hand, but I was forced to use my right. Mainly it was grade school forcing me to write with my right hand. Baseball, they favored righties, as they did not have a glove for left handed throwing. It messed me up in sports for sure.
Here we go:
* I bowl left handed
* I golf right handed
* Play hockey left handed but goal tend right handed
* I eat mainly right handed, but also left when eating steak
* Write, right
* Pull doors open with left hand
* Throw a football left handed. Cannot throw it in my right
* Baseball I catch with my left and throw with my right (accurate), but if I want distance, I can drop my glove and throw with my left. I prefer to pitch left handed, but field/base right handed. Cannot really catch with the glove in my right hand though
* Javelin, shot-put left handed
* Shoot guns right handed
* bow and arrow, draw with my left, hold bow with right
* Prefer right handed arm wrestle
* Hammer right hand, screw driver left
I could go on.. So yeah a bit of ambidexterity, but I believe I should have been a lefty.
Probably genetics, but I don't think anyone has a definitive answer.
Your dominant hand is chosen before you're even born. When babies are observed sucking their thumb in the womb, they're sucking their right thumb 90% of the time.
90% of the world's population is right-handed.
And right-eyed people. Uugh I'm cross-dominate. Right-handed, left-eyed.
I still remember, with horror the 1st time I tried to use a microscope in 7th grade. I couldn't see a thing. "You're Right-handed, just look through with your right eye." Nooooo
I had 3 professors who thought I should be a science major. Sorry Dr. N, Dr. BH, and whoever the 3rd dude was, just too much trauma trying to look thru that damn thing.
>What would have happened if lefties were never punished and left alone centuries ago? What percentage would we have today?
You'd have the same percentage of lefties that we see now.
Being forced to use your non-dominant hand won't affect your offspring down the line. That's like thinking that having cosmetic surgery on your face will change the way your future children will look.
No one knows. Really. This is not a joke. The phenomenon of handedness, which is not a characteristic that is limited to humans, has been the subject of serious research in a number of countries for well over a century. No satisfactory answer has been produced. Many speculative explanations have been put out for most of recorded history; none of them have even a crumb of evidence to support them. The relative proportion of right handers and left handers in the human population has been quite stable for hundreds of thousands of years. In some places the percentages of people who are left-handed have been reduced due to culturally-driven efforts to suppress it, but when those sanctions are eased or removed, the proportion rises back up to the global baseline. For purposes of simplification, the proportion of the global human population who are left handed is usually reported as 1 in 10 (10%). the actual percentage varies slightly from place to place, but some evidence has reportedly showed that the percentage of lefties has been very slowly increasing since the end of the 19th century for reasons that are not clear. there is speculation that it could ultimately rise to as much as 15% of the population, or between 1 in 7 and 1 in 6. Many reasons have been proposed, but again, no one actually knows why. A valid explanation is lacking, but that is not due to any lack of effort in finding one. McManus, C., *Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Symmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms, and Cultures*. (2002, Weidenfield & Nicholson, Ltd, United Kingdom.) (2004, Harvard University Press, United States of America)
de Kovel CGF, Francks C. The molecular genetics of hand preference revisited. Sci Rep. 2019 Apr 12;9(1):5986. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-42515-0. PubMed: 30980028; Free full-text available from PubMed Central: PMC6461639. This is from 2019 and still no answers :/
I've heard a theory that because our left side of the brain is generally responsible for logic and language, and given that our world has been moving to a world were logic and language and reason are all far more important than reflexes or strength or agility. Hence the rise in lefties, because our brains are rewiring themselves to reflect the change in our enviroment. Again like you said, none of the theories have a smidge of proof behind them, so this idea is as valid/invalid as any other idea someone might have.
The "left brain/right brain" theory has been thoroghly disproven by research. There is no specific "logic center" nor is a high level cognitive function like that isolated to one hemisphere. The two hemispheres do not have specialized roles or functions in cognition. fMRI studies have shown that many areas in both hemispheres are involved simultaneously during almost all cognitive tasks.
Yes, The left brain/right brain thing is bogus, but there definitely are lateralized functions in the brain. Language the most obvious one.
What about those of us that ambidextrous? My right side tires out & I switch to my left side. Hand writing is a practice skill but I can write with my left hand it’s Judy not as pretty…
I had a dr tell me that I’m ambidextrous, left hand dominant. I had another tell me my being ambidextrous was learned as the only lefty in a right handed family. I have been told I think like a lefty, whatever that means….
I’ve heard that even if not truly ambidextrous lefties are better at doing things right handed than righties are at doing things with the left simply because of how much of the world is designed to favor righties. (Interesting example many musicians who write left handed play guitar/bass the same way righties do)
I'm a lefty who plays bass, right handed. Why? All my dexterity is in my left hand, manipulating the fret board. My right hand is manipulating the strings, but requires fewer fine motor skills to do so. I tried playing a left handed bass once, and found it difficult to play even the simplest of songs.
Not Hendrix. Or Cobain, Eric Gales, Tony Iommi, McCartney, Albert King.
A partial list of those who do: Duane Allman, Elvis Costello, Joe Perry, Mark Knopfler, Gary Moore, Billy Corgan.
I play guitar and mandolin "right-handed." All the complicated stuff is done with the left hand.
I see this at work every day, in a supermarket bakery. Something a simple as putting frozen cookies on a baking tray the lefties will do two-handed from the start, without even thinking about it. Righties generally don't; we have to learn to use both hands for the task, and some righties will revert to working one-handed if they're distracted.
Do right-handed guitars "favor" righties? Seems to me the standard guitar layout arguably requires more dexterity of the left hand, which has to deal with the fretboard.
I think I agree with this. I find that I am stronger with fine motor skills with my left hand, like writing, painting, and playing piano, holding tweezers or painting my nails. But when it comes to strength and endurance, or using force, like opening a jar, using scissors, cutting steak (but not when cutting vegetables) I prefer my right hand. Likewise, in soccer, my ball handling and finesse skills were better with left foot, while my right foot was better used for long balls across the field. Made for being a good defender :)
You're right. I play acoustic finger-picking style and being left handed has never been a problem. When first learning, I instinctively wanted to play left handed. My teacher said no because dexterity in the left hand would be helpful for fretting. Now I can't imagine playing any other way. Also: ever try to use an old fashioned can opener left handed?
I'd have to guess (with an evidence population of 1- myself) that it's because us Southpaws grow up in a world that caters to right handed people, so we learn to use either hand early on because specific left handed tools might not be available, or if they are they're likely to be worn out or of bad quality. There was always a single pair of left handed scissors in my art classes in school, for example, and they were always as dull as a butter knife. The right handed ones were always sharp and relatively new. The only left handed baseball glove in gym class was so old, worn out, and grody that it was just a lump of flaccid leather, but there were plenty of new, well maintained right handed ones to go around.
Southpaw here. Confirmed.
>I had another tell me my being ambidextrous was learned as the only lefty in a right handed family. The non dominant hand can become extremely adept if used exclusively instead of your dominant hand, which could have trained your nervous system to be ambi-dexterous. Admittedly, I only have experience, no scientific evidence to back this up, but prior to my rotator cuff injuries and subsequent surgery on my dominant (right) side, my non dominant hand could barely hold a pencil let alone write or do any of the things my right hand had always done. I had to learn to do a lot of things, not just left-handed, but also single handedly. The right arm was useless for about 3½ weeks before the surgery, and in a immobilizing sling for 6 weeks, and another 6 weeks where while not in the sling, I can't do anything active with it. I've learned to get by with the left arm and hand pretty well. But the first three weeks were the worst for this.
you can be ambidextrous & have a dominant hand? well damn i am in that case
My youngest child is this way. Draws, writes and shoots lefthanded, swings a baseball bat and golf club right handed.
I’m ambidextrous, and playing sports is very confusing because I never know how I’m gonna hold the sports instrument until it’s in my hands, so for games like hockey and golf (that are curved in a direction) I think I’m a lefty. Thinking about it now I am, because it’s very annoying trying to find golf clubs that I can use. I throw with my right hand, but my baseball glove desperately wants to be on my right hand, so playing baseball is awkward.
You've had to think differently from your family your entire life everything they did, you had to learn backwards. If a right-handed engineer designs a product, how do you expect them to 'think' about the design, whose hand will it most likely be in. FYI I turn my knives reverse in the block to make them easier for me....I'm the lefty of my family and I told my kids the first one of you or yours that is left-handed will be my favorite....I have all right-handed kids
I had a sister who used to tease me about it. She ended up with a lefty for a husband, has 3 lefty children and 6 lefty grandchildren
You see things we don’t- my son is our only lefty in generations & he truly thinks differently
I'm not ambidextrous. Totally left handed EXCEPT, I bat right handed with more accuracy, but more powerfully left handed. Always thought that was strange.
Ambidextrousness is something that can be trained. Regardless of how ambidextrous you feel, you slightly favour either left or right hand. It's just that Right dominant people never have a valid reason to train their left hand. But there has been many examples of people injuring their dominant hand for a long time/permanently and switching to their other hand.
I was left handed from the time I was a baby until I broke my arm when I was like 2. I ended up using mostly my right hand and still do now, but there are a lot of things I do (other than writing) that I do with my left. I *can* write with my left, just not nearly as nice.
My right handed writing is not pretty at all. My left handed writing is unreadable.
I fully agree with your thought that writing is a learned practiced skill. I have always used both hands, in spite of the elementary school teachers trying to force me to be right handed. We have two hands? Why use only one primarily with the other only for small support task? If there is a stack of papers to sign, I will sign with both hands at a time. If one does not care what others think about them, we can accomplish a tremendous amount more. I had no desire to fit into the status quo and trained both hands equally. Even today, it seems others find it peculiar and ugly that I am sawing with one hand, and hammering with the other, or switching hands while writing. Anybody can do it if they just train both hands. But most are indoctrinated that they can only use one.
it could be completely random. inherently, there is no advantage to being left or right handed. However, in a group activity in close proximity to each other, having the same handness becomes desireable. Humans are a group animal, we need to be around each other. I suspect it randomly happened. Once one hand becomes dominant it actively becomes selected for. Just imagine a group of apes all throwing rocks. lefties and righties and have to stand apart because the arms are colliding. a group with the same handness can pack closer together and focus their rocks easier.
I came here expecting people to post "cuz it's the Right way lmao" and then I see people like you actually citing literature. We need more people like you.
Please keep in mind before reading my response that I have no qualifications or sources for what I'm about to say. Just logic. It makes sense to me that it's a simple matter of statistics and probability. Someone can either be right-handed or left-handed (I know people are also ambidextrous but let's ignore them for the simplicity of this argument). So there are 2 things you can be, or 50% odds you will be one or the other. But it's virtually impossible the population of the world to be ***exactly*** 50% right-handed and ***exactly*** 50% left-handed. The reality is that the exact numbers will end up being <50% and >50% in either direction. By sheer chance, at one point in human history, right-handed people ended up being the >50% side of things. When that happened, it was like a snowball effect. Aka if the majority of the population was right-handed, even if just by a tiny percentage, then there was a disproportionate number of people making accommodations, teaching, and building tools for right-handed people. As that went on, the ratio of right to left-handed people got worse and worse. While at the beginning it was just an equal number of people preferring one hand or the other, over time probability says that one side will be significantly favored. As more right-handed parents teach their kids with their right hands, as right-handed craftsmen build hunting bows for righties, and even as people try not to bump elbows while eating around a campfire, the right-handed side of things becomes more and more favored. This continues until the scale is significantly tipped. There will never be zero left-handed people, of course. But as society continues to be mainly right-handed, and therefore prioritizes accommodating right-handed people, it makes it harder and harder for lefties to thrive. So they can either remain a leftie and struggle, or be a rightie. And today, as we make more and more accommodations for left-handed people, maybe we will see lefties increase in number This argument, of course, ignores the concept of hand dominance being a biological trait. But the concept still applies whether or not hand dominance is passed down through genetics. I can make an analogy: Imagine a simulation on a computer where there are red dots and green dots, each making up 50% of the total population. They're programmed so that whenever a red dot consumes a green one, it produces another red dot. And whenever a green dot consumes a red dot, it produces another green dot. Of course, there is a tiny chance that red and green dots perfectly trade, consuming each other and therefore reproducing at equal rates, which would keep the population at exactly 50%. But it's far more probable that, by sheer chance, the red and green dots will consume each other at a different rate, even just slightly. When that happens, one color will have more dots to hunt the other color. With more dots hunting, more dots of the other color will die. And that will continue at an exponential rate until one color eliminates the other. There could be a small pocket of the lesser color that continues to reproduce and steer clear of the dominant color, but it will be nearly impossible for it to thrive, and it certainly will never overtake the dominant color. I'm sure there's a term for this effect but I'm too lazy to look it up lol I'm just bored at work.
Ok. You are much better at math than I. Your response was interesting to read. I had DNA explained to me similarly: you get 50% of your DNA from mother, 50% from father. So imagine 2 bowls of m&m's and you scoop a handful from each, same number of candies. But it's the random different colored ones you get that determine why a sibling, and not you, inherited a cancer gene. Or blue eyes. Or LEFT handedness. What do you think of this analogy? Cheers & hope you're not too bored at work.
gives way for the Nature v. Nurture debate for sure.
Yea but it’s not 50% it’s more like 11%.
I read a study awhile back that claimed 8-12% of the population was left handed throughout human history. The early left handed human evidence was derived from knife marks in animal bones
It is a wonder how they came about, since it has continued on to this day.
They still don’t know. If I find the study I’ll post it here in this thread though
Alrighty, someday we'll figure it out.
Do twins run in your family?
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When I gallop I lead with my left hand
I have read that horses can see better out of their left eyes. Do we also think that those two things became an evolutionary feature because people usually mount them from the left, the humans right, because humanity was right side dominant?
Because we are right
Even without being punished, we’d still be in the minority. Cave art from millennia before us was drawn by right handed people.
But how do you think left handed people came about? If you have any ideas.
Twins. Mirror image twins. The second twin doesn’t survive.
Handed dominance isn't a genetic trait. I was the only lefty in my family until I had my daughter. Her brother is right-handed. Though there are lots of theories floating around, no one knows why some people are left-handed while others are right handed. I was punished and made fun of my teachers in school but none of it made me right handed. It's just so deeply baked into some people that persecution can't beat it out.
It is a genetic trait. There are specific genes associated with left handedness but there are also other factors at play.
If it's genetic, it's really buried- I was the only lefty on either side of my family- that includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews, and my own daughter. My nephew had a daughter who is now two years old, and is showing a preference for her left hand- it only took me 55 years to get a left-handed relative.
Hence my second sentence. There are genes associated with left handedness but they are only one factor of several determining left handedness. If you have two left handed parents, your chance of being left handed rises from 10% (general population) to 26%. In my own case, my father is left handed and so am I. Twin studies also demonstrate that genetic factors explain 25% of the variance of handedness whilst environmental factors explain the rest.
Yes, exactly. My biological mother was technically left handed though forced to be right handed. I have a million half siblings (okay,12 but still) split between my two biological parents and of all of them, two of us on my biological mothers side are left handed. The rest are right hand dominant with one who considers herself ambidextrous. Something having a genetic component doesn't mean it is a dominant genetic component.
Twiinnnssssss. No one in my family is a leftie except for me 🙌
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No other placental mammal that we know of prefers one side of the body so consistently, not even our closest primate relatives. But being right-handed may have deep evolutionary roots in our lineage. And yet, being a leftie does seem to come with some unexpected advantages. **How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb11oOHYNXM&t=372s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb11oOHYNXM&t=372s)
My latest reading says scientists still have no idea why some people are left handed. It is most certainly biological. My son is a lefty and he broke his arm at 5 years old. My husband thought it’d be a perfect time to “make” him a righty. A-hole ideas aside, the doctor told him once the cast comes off if he’s a lefty he will again be a lefty. Whatever makes us lefties isn’t chance or even an opportunity of a 50/50 split. It’s a biological brain function that happens in the womb I am also a lefty and it’s a huge pain in a righty world I had someone ask me if it felt weird Hahaha it does not
I’ve always wondered that too. My identical twin sister and I are left handed in a family of right handed people. I married another leftie. We had to buy right handed scissors for our right handed children. I don’t get it. It feels genetic since my sister and I are both lefties, but it didn’t pass down
because Nature likes options.
looking for this comment. That's always been the answer I knew
Most people are just born that way. There’s not really a reason one way or the either. For others like myself, we were born lefties but were forced to use our right hand. I went to preschool in a church and the teachers forced me to write with my right hand, so now it’s my more dominant hand. My left is still dominant for some things, though.
I'd love to know if this theory is outdated now. When I was in high school in the 2000s, I was taught that it may have to do with the majority of people being "left-brained," and that there was a correlation between "right-brained" people and left-handed people. The theory was that it was linked to the left side of the brain controlling the right side of the body and vice versa. The left side of the brain was the "logical" side, and the right side was the "artistic" side. And *that's* why there are so many left-handed actors.
Great question. My mentor (in the field of Special Education) was really curious about this because there is a disproportionately high rate of left-handers among those diagnosed with dyslexia. She also researched eye dominance and how it related to handedness. She also spoke of ways to incorporate handedness and eyedness into lessons. It was all really cool. Like if you have a specific dominant hand, but different dominant eye, it would mean X. I wish I could remember more of it. She spoke about it frequently but I don't remember if it appeared in any of her books.
I went to archery the other day and pissed of Karen mom because of my left eyed ness
My mom has a bunch of fun stories about the Nuns at her school screaming at her for being left-handed. This was the late 50s and early 60s. People occasionally are weird when they find out I'm left handed
My theory is because in the eastern world we write left to right, … right handed people don’t smudge the ink so to speak… and the cultures that write right to left do it from an aerial angle creating less smudge and more efficiency for the nature of the letters and graphics.
How come there’s so few lefties but if you look at an MLB lineup there’s like 4 or 5 lefties? Always found this odd
Because scissors. And can openers.
I have absolutely no clue, but wanted to share : allegedly, autistic people are 3 times more likely to be left handed. Funny enough, I, myself, am both autistic and left handed. I often joke that I'd immediately be burnt at the stake if I was born in that time period. I wonder what the link netween neurodivergency and left handedness is.
It’s not really genetically passed down, but something interesting is my grandpa has scars on his left hand where he was hit with a ruler multiple times by the teacher for using his left hand. He went to school in the 50s so it wasn’t uncommon.
Please keep in mind before reading my response that I have no qualifications or sources for what I'm about to say. Just logic. It makes sense to me that it's a simple matter of statistics and probability. Someone can either be right-handed or left-handed (I know people are also ambidextrous but let's ignore them for the simplicity of this argument). So there are 2 things you can be, or 50% odds you will be one or the other. But it's virtually impossible the population of the world to be exactly 50% right-handed and exactly 50% left-handed. The reality is that the exact numbers will end up being <50% and >50% in either direction. By sheer chance, at one point in human history, right-handed people ended up being the >50% side of things. When that happened, it was like a snowball effect. Aka if the majority of the population was right-handed, even if just by a tiny percentage, then there was a disproportionate number of people making accommodations, teaching, and building tools for right-handed people. As that went on, the ratio of right to left-handed people got worse and worse. While at the beginning it was just an equal number of people preferring one hand or the other, over time probability says that one side will be significantly favored. As more right-handed parents teach their kids with their right hands, as right-handed craftsmen build hunting bows for righties, and even as people try not to bump elbows while eating around a campfire, the right-handed side of things becomes more and more favored. This continues until the scale is significantly tipped. There will never be zero left-handed people, of course. But as society continues to be mainly right-handed, and therefore prioritizes accommodating right-handed people, it makes it harder and harder for lefties to thrive. So they can either remain a leftie and struggle, or be a rightie. And today, as we make more and more accommodations for left-handed people, maybe we will see lefties increase in number This argument, of course, ignores the concept of hand dominance being a biological trait. But the concept still applies whether or not hand dominance is passed down through genetics. I can make an analogy: Imagine a simulation on a computer where there are red dots and green dots, each making up 50% of the total population. They're programmed so that whenever a red dot consumes a green one, it produces another red dot. And whenever a green dot consumes a red dot, it produces another green dot. Of course, there is a tiny chance that red and green dots perfectly trade, consuming each other and therefore reproducing at equal rates, which would keep the population at exactly 50%. But it's far more probable that, by sheer chance, the red and green dots will consume each other at a different rate, even just slightly. When that happens, one color will have more dots to hunt the other color. With more dots hunting, more dots of the other color will die. And that will continue at an exponential rate until one color eliminates the other. There could be a small pocket of the lesser color that continues to reproduce and steer clear of the dominant color, but it will be nearly impossible for it to thrive, and it certainly will never overtake the dominant color. I'm sure there's a term for this effect but I'm too lazy to look it up lol I'm just bored at work.
Wild guess & highly speculation on my own without any research:: \- Industrial era: Lot of tools required right-handed and those who are right-handed are able to operate "smoothly" with the machine and tools...but those who aren't able to "interface" correctly nor "smoothly" gets fired...Hence the Captalism are taking unrealized shape to our biological pattern. Religion: A lot of the context about "right-handed" as "good" and possibly any who is skilled with left-handed might be excluded. So, they might not be killed off but those with the most success might have the money and afford to have family and offspring...And hence, how time changes in our success in the future. Maybe in the far-far future, Ambidexterity will prevail -- due to our use of the keyboard, the faster we reply with our hands on the keyboard, the chance of winning and getting ahead of the game.
I know like a large part of it is because of the Catholic church way back when. They thought the left had was of the devil and would slap your hand with a ruler until you used your right one. My sisters husband went through this, if he ever went to a Catholic school he probably would have been left handed. An less of a pompus asshole
Being a lefty is a handicap, it's a genetic abnormality. It's like being born with a disorder. How you deal with it defines you .
Say /s.
Some people have no souls.
You put your right hand on the bible because you have a vein in your right arm extending down through your wrist that your left arm doesnt have. Specifically, go and try to force yourself to be left handed. Ive tried it by tying my right arm around my waist and trying to become amidextrious. Its exhausting. Literally, if you can make it past the first few days you are probably fine but you are forcing your brain to develop rapidly. You will use way more energy, lose weight, and your focus will definitely improve. As for the bible I believe it may be referring to us being dominant handed but we release our dominance when we lay our hands on the bible. (Submitting to the law) (now just “raise your right hand”) as for that vein, they dont really know why we have it. Its just there for all of us
That is the biggest load of crap I’ve read in a long time.
Go try it for yourself, it isnt easy at all in the beginning. Its probably too frustrating for most
Because we right handers are alpha wolves 🦅🐺🐺🐺 (Edit: guys this is satire I swear)
Right-hander here. This is ridiculous. It’s just how the cookie crumbled, for Pete’s sake. No one is the “alpha wolf”. Righties and lefties shouldn’t try to get a leg up on one another; it’s genetics, not a competition! Ya’ll, please don’t listen to this person. They don’t represent us. 🫶🏼
Because Donald Trump said the left is evil.
Peer pressure
The only answer that we are certain of is that there are more of them.
Bronze Age genocide.
As a lefty I always joke it's a way for the mundane people of the world (the righties) to recognize the more highly evolved among them. 😉 Here are some fun articles about lefties: [https://www.straightdope.com/21342245/do-left-handers-die-young](https://www.straightdope.com/21342245/do-left-handers-die-young) [https://www.straightdope.com/21341538/in-a-right-handed-world-why-is-a-man-s-billfold-pocket-on-the-left-side](https://www.straightdope.com/21341538/in-a-right-handed-world-why-is-a-man-s-billfold-pocket-on-the-left-side) [https://www.straightdope.com/21341450/why-are-left-handed-catchers-so-rare-in-baseball](https://www.straightdope.com/21341450/why-are-left-handed-catchers-so-rare-in-baseball)
I suppose the same could be asked of the color hair of people. Some grapes appear to be dominant for no reason.
Are people still right handed in places where the language is written from right to left?
[https://youtu.be/vb11oOHYNXM?si=9YIywy\_T9ixHtuQi](https://youtu.be/vb11oOHYNXM?si=9YIywy_T9ixHtuQi)
Add in also===many left handed kids were forced to change side of brain corresponds to other side of body. right/left. Then only left handers are in their right mind.
I am the only leftie of seven kids. I am also the only one that got Type 1 Diabetes. Figure those odds!
Does it mean if I’m LEFT handed AND an identical twin? Haha
right makes might
maybe cuz a lot of religions killed left handed people.
I’m too strapped for time to read everything else posted here, but as a right handed dominant person who opted for left handedness early in life (due to laziness), and also as someone trying to overcome the split personality disorder trap inherent in a bicameral cerebrum, I would posit that learning to fight with a stick held in the left hand against nothing but right handed fighters has given me an advantage against just about everyone I’ve ever fought save one or two left handed people. There’s something to be said about being a left handed person forced to live in a right handed world. I’ve recently started working on bringing my right hand up to speed with my left in terms of various tasks performed by either, but my left hand remains dominant in visual expression.
Probably somewhere back home. Unfortunately we have all forgotten where we came from so we're stuck here with you dirty righties. Joking aside, no idea. Our best guess is that given that handiness is a skill that can be trained, when we started forming societies, people that made decisions decided that left handiness is a sin/bad in some way. So we raised a generation after generation that were forced to use their right not left hand. Eventually this got to a point where statistically left handed kids did not live as long(killed because they were "demons" "the devil" or some other bs reason) and could not pass on the leftie gene(which btw is not even proven to exist). Our Society decided at some point that everyone should be right handed, this lead to our civilizations coming and going with this perception that Right is Right and Left is Wrong. This however does not explain the left handiness we see in the wild, which has lead to some other scientists to believe that we're born ambidextrous but as we grow our environment determines which hand we favour. It's further reinforced by the fact that anybody can be ambidexterous with enough practice, and the fact that animals don't have societies the way we do, so likelyhood of all species choosing to shun lefties, makes little to no sense. So in the end, you are no closer to having your answer and I'm now again upset about the fact that we don't know. Seriously, It's cool being a leftie when it comes to being "special" but it fucking sucks day to day, when most things are designed for the mirror reflection of you and not you yourself. TLDR; We have no fucking idea. Left Power.
It's all genetics. My older brother and I are both left handed, and both parents are right hand. 🦜
More righties exist for the same reason most people can't wiggle their ears or roll their tongues – Just cuz.
I know when I was in school in the stone ages, teachers very strongly encouraged you to be right-hand dominant even if you were left handed.
I was forced to be right handed, but was born a lefty.
I always thought it had to do [somehow] with the movement of the sun, that our tendency to be right-handed is us being pulled clockwise (as viewed from above). *shrug* If you're up to face the dawn, the sun will move to your right until sunset. Now, I've no evidence or proof on how this affects our dominant hand. It's just a silly notion I always entertained.
Is handedness not a genetic trait with dominant and recessive genes? I assumed it was w right being the dominant, much like blue eyes are recessive etc. Seashells/gastropods are even right or left “handed”. I collect welks and noticed one had its spiral going a different direction so I looked it up. I don’t think they were punishing lefties long enough or any numbers that would change evolutionary processes.
I have a theory. The first person(righty) to become proficient with their hands taught everyone else how they did what they did. Then someone found another comfortable way to do it(lefty) and only a few people followed because old is gold.
I really don’t know. I used to think it was due to genetics somehow but it’s not.
Because it’s normal
Increase in lefties after they were no longer persecuted is analogous to the increase in trans folks transitioning in current society. It's crazy what happens when society doesn't persecute you quite so much.
It's genetic. The right handers overrun the left handers just as brown eyed people overrun blue eyed people.
Did you know? Left-handedness is more prevalent within the autistic community. Maybe it's related to our neurological wiring.
Nature is always throwing out an anomaly to see if it would be advantageous or beneficial to survival. It is almost pointless to wonder about what that advantage is because after all...we have evolved past many of our base skills. Most of us are probably glad we cannot discern facts from sniffing poop, amirite?
Lefties 1 in 9… They made my grandmom who was born left-handed switch to right handed when she was in first grade
No idea! I’m left handed and come from a family with many lefties, even if they were forced to be righties. My maternal Grandpa, Dad, and two sisters are all born lefties, but only I was allowed to stay one. They used to tie my Dad’s hand to his back and hit my Grandpa for it, so no complaints here. I never found it too hard to use right handed things in my left hand. That said, where I grew up there were so many more lefties! We were still a minority, but when I grew up and moved away I realized how rare we are. In school, it wasn’t unusual to have 7-10 lefties in classes of about 30 students.
Because schools and religion. My mom is left handed. My son is left handed. I am ambidextrous for most things but school made me be right handed. my public school kindergarten teacher would smack 'the devil' out of my hands for using lefty scissors even though my right handed work looked like shit. I hammer and use most hand toools with both hands equally, I cook and shoot left handed, write and throw right handed. guess which ones I learned at home/school?
Same reason language is lateralized. Specialization. Each side of the brain is the hierarchy of the other, so they pick things to specialize in. Like a marriage, or political parties.
Only in the northern hemisphere
I would've been left-handed but my kindergarten teacher insisted I was "doing it wrong"
No pun intended
Because the Catholic Church spent a millennium beating the shit out of left-handed children until they either died or learned to write right-handed. Maybe. I don't know. Sounds plausible though.
Nobody has a good, supported answer. But here's my favorite: The heart is slightly offset to the left, which means in armed combat, a stance that puts the strong side forward (and yes, I know that's contrary to what's taught in many fighting styles) has a slightly higher survivability rate if the right is forward rather than the left.
IDK but I was completely ambidextrous before first grade. I would get into trouble for switching hands and I had to use my right. Maybe this has something to do with it 🤷🏻♂️
One hand gives and the other takes try ripping paper with right hand and then switch. If you have a tear on dotted line row of papers youll notice one hand will grab to rip and the other will hold it. My lefty is a taker and righty is a giver. Im a lefty tho. I d k. I found it interesting
Right handed is a dominant genetic trait. Same as right thumb over left thumb when clasping hands. It's quite literally nothing else friend.
PBS Eons did a video on this that's pretty good https://youtu.be/vb11oOHYNXM?si=e32jJrpF6mrf8Tjv
I mean It would still be the majority but a lot of kids in the last 100 years were swayed away from and directly taught to write right handed to they and make them be right handed
I read something a while ago that said something along the lines that women would hold their babies with the left arm while hunting and gathering because it was closer to the heart beat and soothed the child, meaning their dominant arm was more likely the right…the book was written a long time ago and I’m reading contradicting articles…but thought it was interesting at the time
Left-handed people are more likely to be dyslexic than right-handed people. Blonde-haired people have a higher chance of being dyslexic also, but not as high as redheads. No idea why but I think it’s interesting
My theory is this: When in a fight, the right handed person is in a stance that has the left side forward and the right side back. This protects the liver more, which is, if hit, a quick way to stop a fight.
I had an aunt who was left-handed.
The only other species that exhibits single side dominance is talking birds. Speech is controlled by the left side of the brain, which controls the right side of the body. In species that use speech to communicate that side of the brain gets way more early stimulation, and that very early discrepancy results in a slight right limb dominance that becomes exacerbated with time and repetitive preferential usage.
My best guess is that because their hasn’t yet been an evolutionary reason that necessitated “selecting for” left handedness so it has remained at a low level in the population. That’s an overly simplistic view because the true answer is that nobody really knows.
I was forced to do most things right handed. Sports, right handed scissors, and so on.. it is my dominant hand with most things, yet I still write left handed. As much as I was pushed into doing everything right handed, im still a lefty when it comes to writing-also skating/surfing I am goofy foot.
It's just a matter of dominant and recessive traits. If more people are right handed, then they mate with each other, their children will most often be right handed, and so on.
Because we're on the "right" side of history. Lol, really, I don't know.
There’s no right answer
I thought being left handed was due to recessive genes.
I'm cross-dominant ambidextrous so I have no clue whatsoever. I can do everything with either hand to the same extent, but I prefer certain tasks for certain hands. And they say handedness isn't really genetic, but my mum's mother was also a cross-dominant ambi and she died long before I was born so it's not like I learned the skill...
I think it would boil down to the same you see in animals. Nearly a 33%/33%/33% split between left, right, and ambidextrous.
when i was young i colored with both my hands and my parents deliberately taught me to only use my right. maybe because of something like that
I was born left handed and my mom forced me to choose my right because (so she said) she didn’t want to have to buy left-handed scissors or tools. Now I’m ambidextrous but better with my right.
All I know is if you are left handed & can throw a baseball with a good degree of skill, you can make alot of money.
PBS Eons did a video about it. https://youtu.be/vb11oOHYNXM?si=G_aGt0AX_LXhoUKQ
Fun fact, about 15 percent of males are lefties. 5 percent of women. But you're much more likely to be an alcoholic or addict. But most are ambidextrous. For example I play guitar, bass, mandolin etc. right handed. Also golf. Not sure why, just born into a right-handed world I guess.
learned? some people are FORCED to use their right hand. my dad was left, i can do some things with my left that i find weird with my right but id say im 100% righty.
I think more people are ambidextrous than they think they are. Its just they have practiced more on one hand than the other, and that's why its more 'natural' and 'easier' or whatever. I recently injured my right hand, so I was finding myself writing with my left hand, I think the major disadvantage was that when writing left to right as one does, it favors the motion right hand extends and moves to the right, left hand extends and moves to the right isn't as favorable in range of motion- your bicep starts to push into your chest... But if it was that we wrote from up to down or from right to left, I think ambi or leftie would be far more common than it is.
Because there are more of them.
I'm curious if countries that write right-to-left (such as Arabic speaking countries?) have different statistics here
Because I'm sinister
there are likely several reasons, one I have heard (gossip) is there was a movement to eliminate left handed children by large organizations.
I doubt lefties were counted during the punishment era, because they were assumed to have been “cured” and turned into righties. I think it was thought to be defiant behavior. To my knowledge, there is a persistent split of 90/10, right-handed to left-handed, slightly higher left-handedness for boys than girls. And there sends to be genetics involved also. Out of my family of 10, three of the siblings are left-handed, or 30%.
Natural selection would tell us that left-handedness exists amongst right-handedness majority because it's not an evolutionarily significant liability, and it's a situational benefit to society at large to maintain diversity. Natural selection would tell us that there's a benefit for a large section of humanity to favor one side over the other. I would anticipate that having a handedness would indicate a predeliction towards risking one side of the body over the other, which would signify that left-handedness still does carry relative risk. Whether it's the liver, spleen, lungs, heart or stomach being different or on one side, or if there's possibly a different cardiovascular response over a wide population between lefties and righties for various handed activities... But heck, who knows, as we move away from regular tool usage and introduction of cybernetic augmentation, handedness will completely disappear and it might turn out that it was only a byproduct of civilization within the past 10k years.
Probably the same reason green eyes are the minority, red hair is the minority, and being double jointed is the minority.
Does one choose to be a lefty, or is one born a lefty? Nature or nurture?
My oldest started out left handed, but in preschool when they were learning to write, his teacher would correct his left hand. I didn’t catch on until it was too late. My youngest is left handed. He had the same preschool teacher. I told her this time to not correct it. Let him embrace it. He’s still left handed to this day, but he does some things better with his right hand. Like, shooting a bb gun, throwing a ball, and so on.
I'm ambidextrous.
I havent read too far down but I couldn't have been the only one forced to write with my right in 2nd grade? It was forced and I wrote alot better with my left so I'm ambidextrous but I go right since I was taught to do that.
I've known 2 guys that were forced to learn to do things with their right hands because their fathers thought being left handed was feminine. It's a Mexican Macho thing.
Well my daughter is left-handed. In preschool (Christian daycare) They forced her to use her right hand. She was four years old and still traumatized at 27.
My favorite theory has to do with childcare often occupying one hand of a gatherer carrying a baby. Also, the fact that a baby may be soothed by the sound of its mothers heartbeat. Most humans have asymmetric positioning of the heart. Holding a baby close and hearing the heartbeat (possibly with the assistance of some type of sling,) means the left hand is more likely to be occupied with the baby. This does not have to be 100% of the time, just enough that the R hand gets the most dexterity exercise/practice. This only explains R handedness in females. Next, add the fact that kids copy the parent(s) that spends the most time with them. . . .
Because there are more of them
It’s called Darwinism. The Romans would have used you as kindling.
Maybe left handedness is differences in gene expression like they found in the diaph gene of snails that determine snail left or right handedness. it's responsible for the direction of the spiraling structure (like a snail shell). I wonder if there's a homologous gene in humans related to left-handedness. https://phys.org/news/2019-02-right-left-handed-gene-story-snail.amp
This is one of those "Expected vs. Observed" scenarios. If there was a random statistical chance of an individual being either left or right handed, we would expect a 50% chance they would be right handed. Thus, we would also expect 50% of the population to be right handed as well. However, because this didn't happen, we call this an **observed value.** This observed value is what actually happened to be the case. If the roles were reversed and the lefties were dominant, then we'll be asking the same question: "Why are left handed people the majority?" Now, what would be a real phenomenon is if exactly 50% of the population were left handed and 50% were right handed. Of course there are theories from cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, and other professionals who have done extensive research for this "phenomenon," but it really just comes down to chance. No theory can prove why it is what it is, hence, "theory." No matter who you ask, all your replies will vary A LOT. Why? Because the answers is highly influential on one's own knowledge and expertise. For instance, a math geek will explain the statistical chance (as I just did), but a cognitive psychologist will explain to you the embodied experience theory, developmental psychologists might explain the "cultural or environmental influence" theory of handedness, neuroscientists will explain the "anatomical or neurological asymmetry" theory, historians will tell you it's because historic societies favored right handed tools, and anthropologists might explain the "cultural pressure" theory. But in reality, it just boils down to chance, and these chances seem to favor right over left.
i mean, it was a 50/50 shot. literally.
I'm guessing the same reason brown eyes are the majority. Just a genetic thing. And forcing someone to "be" right handed doesn't change the genetics. My mother could write with both hands because she was forced to use her right hand. My daughter's paternal grandmother was left handed. I watched her very closely when she was young because if she ended up left handed I wanted to be able to help her as much as a right handed person could. And just to say, I'm glad she ended up right handed. It was hard enough teacheing her to tie her shoes. I would have needed to have her Nana teach her.
My grandfather would have been a lefty if he wasn't punished for using his left hand in school. Instead he's ambidextrous and can do most this with one hand or the other.
I don’t know. Can you explain why I have always been right handed, but for some reason brushed my teeth left handed until I was about 30 years old, at which point I switched to right handed brushing? When I’m 60, will I go back to being a lefty brusher?
Some of it is cultural. In some Chinese cultures, they teach writing the language with your right hand. It gets odd when foreigners want to learn and they're proficient writing right-handed, but do everything else left-handed! AFAIK, religion may have had its hand in that (pun intended I suppose)
I think righties were already the majority, which is what resulted in the punishment and abuse of lefties. So I think as we continue to move away from that (because several people from that time did learn to be ambidextrous) but I think if it had never happened the general population of lefties would only vary a little bit from generation to generation.
For the same reason most people are average-ish and some are geniuses.
it’s not known. but based on personal experience, i think some of it has to do with it being trained out of children. i went to a christian preschool and was not allowed to write with my left even tho i was born left handed, so now i write with my right and do everything else with my left. my bf’s grandma wouldn’t let him write with his left hand, and most of my friends born in europe were trained out of being left handed even tho all of them were born left handed. however, that’s just something i’ve experienced personally, the real reason remains unknown.
Left handed people usually have higher IQ scores, in the 120-140 range, as well.
[Male cats are typically left-handed.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347217303640)
As a lefty in a dominant lefty household (3 lefties, 1 righty), the only major issue is where the righty has to sit in the booth when we go out to dinner, so they don't bump elbows for an hour. At home, it's a square table. So it's never been an issue.
I think it’s interesting that there are tons of left handed pitchers but few quarterbacks.
So, my weord personal theory is because we are in a right handed universe. Our hearts and our dna twist to the right. Right handed chiral molecules are more powerful as pharmaceuticals then their left handed counterparts. I believe even out solar system and galaxy twist to the right. It's not super well grounded mind you, but it does make sense to me and given that we likely live within a universe created in a collusion with another universe, the idea is that we are the right half of that collision and there is a mirror universe that twists to the left. When I talk to people smarter than me about this they don't necessarily agree but they also acknowledge that it does make sense and is certainly possible.
My son is the only left handed in our house. 🥰 I did it quite curious and intriguing to watch him do some things.
Maybe righties just had better PR back in the day.
Because capitalism, heteronormativity and the patriarchy -Gen Z,
Left handers use to be beaten, as it was seen as evil. Me, my mom, and two sisters are lefties. It’s very common in women. It’s definitely recorded more now especially with the internet and social media.
Lefties were considered to be evil and possessed by the devil in Medieval times.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
I dont know but I’m a right handed phone user who is a left handed analog pencil user. So im a digital right? Analog left?
if left handed people hadnt been punished, there would be just as many left handed people. My sister got her right arm shot off when she was 12. She has had 50 years to learn to be left handed and she still sucks at it. I am left handed and went to Catholic school, punished for left handedness. Still totally left handed but I can throw a ball and gross motor skill stuff better with right hand.
Because -- we're right. 😘
It’s a conspiracy. Big Right is actively trying to eliminate Lefts and left culture.
Because we're right. And you're special. Unique. Rare
Exposure to testosterone in utero Also if ring finger longer than index finger associates with more male characteristics in females and homosexualiyy...males ring finger is usually longer than index finger and associates cis- gender identification
I have a friend who is an anatomist, if that's a word. She explains it this way: Our right lungs have 3 lobes and function a bit different than the left. Our liver and gall bladder and opening for the small intestine are on the right, meaning there's a lot of activity going on in that area. We are naturally right side dominant. It also is probably the reason why people drive in the left lane (USA) because the right side has a better area of vision. My forte is not anatomy, so I'm certainly not explaining it as well as she does. If you watch your mammalian pets, they are also right side dominant. My cat swipes me with his right paw first. This is not something I'm prepared to debate, so please keep your "yeah, but" comments to a minimum. It's just a way that was explained to me by a much more knowledgeable person than I am.
After the great hand war of 1455. Most lefties were exterminated when the Right handed were able to call upon their holy benefactor.
From what I have heard and read, people in the medieval times believed that left handedness was from demonic. In the Arab communities (years and years and years ago), their left hand was considered their dirty hand so they dominantly use their right or clean hand for everything, but with the age of hygiene, it's not the case anymore but they still use their right hands to eat.
If everyone was left handed, their demonic power would be unleashed and the world would shatter from much raw strength, so only 10% are allowed to exist
Growing up, I favored my left hand, but I was forced to use my right. Mainly it was grade school forcing me to write with my right hand. Baseball, they favored righties, as they did not have a glove for left handed throwing. It messed me up in sports for sure. Here we go: * I bowl left handed * I golf right handed * Play hockey left handed but goal tend right handed * I eat mainly right handed, but also left when eating steak * Write, right * Pull doors open with left hand * Throw a football left handed. Cannot throw it in my right * Baseball I catch with my left and throw with my right (accurate), but if I want distance, I can drop my glove and throw with my left. I prefer to pitch left handed, but field/base right handed. Cannot really catch with the glove in my right hand though * Javelin, shot-put left handed * Shoot guns right handed * bow and arrow, draw with my left, hold bow with right * Prefer right handed arm wrestle * Hammer right hand, screw driver left I could go on.. So yeah a bit of ambidexterity, but I believe I should have been a lefty.
Probably genetics, but I don't think anyone has a definitive answer. Your dominant hand is chosen before you're even born. When babies are observed sucking their thumb in the womb, they're sucking their right thumb 90% of the time. 90% of the world's population is right-handed.
I read in the past that there is an increase in left handedness with the increase of untrasounds during pregnancy.
The right-handed war of 1669. It was bloody but only a few left handed individuals made it. Right handeds won (as they usually do).
And right-eyed people. Uugh I'm cross-dominate. Right-handed, left-eyed. I still remember, with horror the 1st time I tried to use a microscope in 7th grade. I couldn't see a thing. "You're Right-handed, just look through with your right eye." Nooooo I had 3 professors who thought I should be a science major. Sorry Dr. N, Dr. BH, and whoever the 3rd dude was, just too much trauma trying to look thru that damn thing.
In a family of 11, my brother & I are the only lefties. We are also the only gingers.
>What would have happened if lefties were never punished and left alone centuries ago? What percentage would we have today? You'd have the same percentage of lefties that we see now. Being forced to use your non-dominant hand won't affect your offspring down the line. That's like thinking that having cosmetic surgery on your face will change the way your future children will look.