Left-handed people have been persecuted for following the "devil". The left path is evil, while the right path represents goodness (or so it was believed). Left-handed people were forced to become right-handed (and probably feared) so as to follow the righteous path of god and get into heaven. Or something to that effect. Unfortunately, I do not know how far back that dates. I've always enjoyed learning vocabulary and etymology (tho oddly i feel my vocabulary doesn't actually reflect this interest lol). Anyway, the french word for "right" is "droite". In English, adroite is to be skillful. The french word for "left" is "gauche". In English, gauche means to be clumbsy or socially awkward. Left in general has negative connotations. To my knowledge, ambidextrous means "both are full of skill". ambi = both, dextr = skill, ous = full of. playing the latin roots game. I'm no ace on the roots, but I think dextr is typically associated with right. And sinister, well excellent example. sinstr in latin means unlucky or toward the left. As far as being discriminated against today...eh I don't see it. I am left-handed, and I have never felt out of place...or like a demon for that matter lol. The only thing I hate about it is getting the ink all over my hand as it crosses the page as I write. To demonstrate my illustrious vocabulary, it sucks. Some interesting reading here on handedness bias: http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/lspeak.html#basic =)
The only form of left handed "descrimination" that I found, was in my schooling years, of having to deal with all those damned righty desks which didn't support my lefty way of going about things. Also, lots of descrimination from english teachers who wanted me to write with the spiral on the spiral note book so that it made writing a bit more difficult. But alas, I have gotton along fine.
For lack of any better explanation, I really think that right-handedness is due to the dominance of activity in neural pathways in the left hemisphere cerebral cortex that controls logical skills. I envy those that are ambidextrous and cannot offer any explanation for this. However, as Hercules posted above, 9 out of 10 people are right-handed. This is NOT through social influence. People are genetically born either right-handed or left-handed. Those who are born left-handed and are pressured by social customs to be right-handed are forced to suffer by this constant constraint to their writing skills. Personally, I am right-handed, but my right hand has been almost totally paralyzed for about 15 years now. due to a motorcycle accident: I can no longer write with my right hand. And no matter how hard I try, I cannot regain the same writing function with my left hand, although I do now write left-handed. I have read books on how to learn to write and books on calligraphy but I am "naturally" right-handed. C'est la vie.
Well, I have read (I will try to google for a link) that there is no such thing as right or left handedness being detrmined before birth, babies are ambidexterous and through convenience, they will eventually settle and use one hand more than the other.
Here we are http://toddlerstoday.com/resources/articles/lefthand.htm "When Left is Right Left-Handed Toddlers By Carma Haley Shoemaker One in every 10 people is left-handed, and males are one and a half times more likely to be left-handed then females, according to Lefthanders International. Medical researchers have looked long and hard for what causes people to be left- or right-handed. Their answer? The same reason why brown-eyed people have brown eyes: genes that manifest their trait one out of every 10 chances.. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6773 "Left-handers win in hand-to-hand combat 13:37 08 December 2004 NewScientist.com news service Will Knight Left-handed people may be better equipped for close range mortal combat than those who rely on their right hands, according to researchers. Charlotte Faurie and Michel Raymond of the University of Montpellier in France examined the number of left-handed people in unindustrialised cultures as well as the homicide levels within each culture. They discovered a correlation between levels of violence and the proportion of the left-handed population – the more violent a culture, the higher the relative proportion of left-handers. The cause for this, the researchers suggest, is that left-handers are more likely to survive hand-to-hand combat. The news could provide comfort for those who routinely struggle with right-handed scissors and can-openers, but some experts are unconvinced by the link. Left-handed people are more prone to some health problems, suggesting the trait ought to disappear naturally over many generations through natural selection. But left-handers continue to make up a small proportion of the human population, hinting there could also be some evolutionary advantage to being left-handed. And the ratio of left-handers to right-handers is higher in successful sportspeople than it is in the general population, suggesting there is definite advantage to favouring the left hand or foot in competitive games, such as tennis. Homicidal tendencies "Because of the advantage in sports we thought there could be a similar advantage in fights," Faurie told New Scientist. The theory is that right-handed competitors are less accustomed to facing left-handers, making them a more difficult proposition. Faurie and Raymond studied several unindustrialised societies with varying rates of homicide, using their own fieldwork and ethnographic literature. They excluded industrialised cultures due to a lack of data and because, they argue, use of firearms is unaffected by handedness. At one end of the scale, their sample included the Dioula of Burkina Faso, where just 3.4% of the population is left-handed and there are only 0.013 murders per 1000 inhabitants each year. At the other end of their sample spectrum, they studied records of the Eipo of Indonesia, where 27% of the population is left-handed and the homicide rate is considerably greater - three murders per 1000 people each year. The strong correlation between the proportion of left-handers and the number of homicides in each culture suggests that left-handers are more likely to survive a fight, they say. "It could be one of the reasons left-handedness has survived," Faurie says. "Though there may be other reasons too." Brain differences Daniel Nettle, an expert in human evolutionary history at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, is intrigued. "The results quite surprised me," he says. "But I can't think of any reason why they might be an artefact [of the study design], so it looks like an interesting finding." However, Chris McManus at University College London, who has researched handedness, is more sceptical about the link. "I'm far from convinced," he told New Scientist. "I don't think it is anything as simple as this." McManus says the sample data is too small provide firm evidence of a connection between handedness and fighting prowess and says data from western societies should also have been included. He believes the success of left-handers may be largely due to differences in the brain. "It may be that sometimes their brains assemble themselves in combinations that work better for certain tasks," he says. Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society "
Very Interesting, I can recall a time in kindergarten when I grabbed a pencil and I couldn't remember which hand I was most comfortable with writing, I switched between right and left a few times, until, as I now see, I settled with the left hand.
This article is saying that left- or right-handed is genetically determined ("genes that manifest the trait"). This means that it is determined before birth in the genotype. It is inherited through our DNA structure.
Right hand preference? No i prefer lefthanded people. They don't come out with things like "we all descended from one individual in northern Africa about 25, 000 years ago". Has anyone read a book on evolution (and i don't mean the bible!).
That is fascinating. It makes sense. All your life you're fighting guys who are right handed. Always watching for the killing stroke from the right. Then along comes this lefty..... This may also explain why left handedness is still more common among men than women. Since men are involved in more combat than women. Still, it's not all good news for our sinister friends: From the same article, an anecdotal but striking quote: Sounds reasonable, here's the funny part:
No it does not make sense. Just because you choose two seperate independent variables in one study, and without a control group, and them come up with a correlation, doesn't prove or show anything. I can equally say that every morning the sun comes up and people go to work, therefore people go to work because the sun rises. How ridiculous. "Lefties are no different than righties." Intellectually this has to be true. But since the dawn of civilization society has orchestrated preferences toward the majority, and the majority are righthanded, then righties have an advantage: we right from left to right with our right hand and this is advantageous to the skill of writing (at least it is for me because I am lefthanded!). We go to shake a person's hand with our right hand. The throttle on a motorcyle is on the right. A gun holster is normally a right hand draw. Most countries drive vehicles on the righthand side of the road. Physics is righthanded in symmetrical preference. When I go to a university library to research and use their computers I always find the computer's mouse on the right and am unable to stretch the cord to the left. How awkward and inconvenient this is. In formal occasions etiquette dictates that you use the fork with your right hand. Geez! Where does the discriminatory behavior stop? Woh is the lefties! Such an unfortunate lot.
Somewhat unfortunate. Being a left hander I've been forced to write left handed, right to left, my whole life, but since computers have come around, this has been a god save. *type type type*
Hey, I'm with you all the way on that one. After 15 years I still can't write with my left hand any where near the semblance of eloquence that I could with my right, but what's the difference when everything is punched in by computer keyboard now?
I'm ambidextrous as well, although I am most comfortable writing with my left. I think that righties have just been mollycoddled and babied into being clones of mollycoddled babies. Lefties learn to go lefty by looking at a righty face to face, a righty would have to sit on their lap. Lefties rule.
