Why humans are right handed.

Matthew Clabault P2

Title: Evolution: Why are most of us right handed
Website: BBC
Author: Jason G Goldman
Date: December 16 2014
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141215-why-are-most-of-us-right-handed

Summary

85% of humans are right handed, an overwhelming amount assuming that it would be a 50/50 chance to be left or right handed. But what if there was another factor involved? Scientists have researched our distant ancestors and at around 1.5 million years ago it seems like the right hand was emerging to be dominant. Around 600,000 years ago there is a clear preference of the right hand. This is shown by examining the teeth of ancient remains which shows evidence that the right hand was used to bring food to mouth. Scientists believe that we are mostly right handed because of the wiring of our brain, the left side controlling the right side of the body but also being in charge of language. So because the left side was language controlling the right side of the body, the right hand became dominant as a side effect. Scientists are still trying to find evidence to what gave right handed people an advantage over left handed people.

Connection

This connects to what we are learning because while studying evolution we learned about natural selection while learning about Charles Darwin. And from the fossil record it seems like being right handed gave humans a distinct advantage at some point due to the large amount of people who are right handed. Or it might just be a coincidence, an example of genetic drift. Most likely there was a change in the environment that gave an advantage to the right handed people, thus killing off most of the left handed people. According to Darwin's theory the best fit to survive will repopulate the gene pool thus making it mostly right handed people.