Can anyone explain what humans have been up to here?
Although left-handers currently form about 11% of the population, only about 3% of those born in 1900 were left-handed, a more than three-fold difference which requires explanation. Whether the difference results from social pressure for left-handers to become right-handed, artefacts resulting from response biases that can occur when questionnaires are used, or perhaps a greater mortality of left-handers is still controversial.McManus and Hartigan, Declining Lefthandedness in Victorian England See in the Films of Mitchell and Kenyon, Current Biology, volume 17 number 18, 2007
Pawed in by PD on Thursday, March 27 at 22:21
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3 Comments:
Roughly half of the executive of my local Lib Dem group are left-handed. I wonder how many of the 11% vote LD, and if there's any correlation . . .
As I have said til I am blue indaface 10% (as it was) or 11% as it is now of us may be lefthanded, but 66% of geniuses are lefthanded....can't you tell?!
It must be because people born in those days weren't allowed to be left handed. Both Queen Victoria and King George VI were left handers forced to write with their left. And I think Churchill was the same, because you always saw him smoking his cigars left handed but writing with his right.
Here's an interesting fact: until fairly recently, having a left- handed wife was grounds for divorce in Japan. (What about having a left-handed husband??)
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