The Friends of Charles Darwin

Left-handed people may be better equipped for close range mortal combat than those who rely on their right hands, according to researchers… 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.