Are left handers an entirely different race?

It strikes me really weird that there is only 9 percent of the global population, approximately, that are left handed. A true minority group, that has to adapt almost instantaneously to many different situations. How can that be? I know throughout the ages, there has been many correlations between being left handed and being evil. In some cultures, at some stages through time, even having a spot or mole on your left side meant being burnt at the stake. Highly unfair l reckon, being a highly left dominated person. Through the last part of evolution into the industrialised age, this seems to have been overturned. Now there are many highly regarded left handers in all areas of different culture, in top positions across the globe. Anyone ever thought about this???

One idea that iv'e sort of juggled in my head is that maybe long long ago it was left orrientated people that were the MAJORITY not the other way round. Maybe there was some great left vs right war over years and years until the left population dwindled to it current sort of ratio becuase they were constantly hammered by right handers over the ages??? Any comments??

Well if left handed people are an entirely different race, then my parents should be worried, because their son would be an alien!

IMO left handed people are smarter then right handed people. This may or may not be true, and may just be a myth. I know there is scientific evidence which may back up my assumptions, but its 7:42am and I just woke up and I don't feel like looking it up.

Laziness at its finest.

Well being left handed myself I can probably say I'm pretty different. On the other hand, being in high school everybody thinks they're different so that points null and void.

Anyhow I have to admit it is kind of strange how in several religous cases the lefties get the discrimination. But seing as lefties are the minority it makes sense. It's just human nature to discriminate against the minorities, plain and simple. Good theory, religions need minorities to persecute in order to keep people interested.

Now I have to admit it is pretty strange how in some cases being left handed runs in the family, in my case I've had an uncle and a great-grand uncle who were left handed. And to be honest I'm not sure if it has anything to due with aliens or not. It could go along nicely with the whole Chariots of the Gods theory, but chances are it's just the fact that us lefties are different. Maybe that makes some of us more capable of handling abuse from our peers seing as in some cases (luckily not very often anymore) schools will discriminate (trying to convert us, it happens), on a rare occasion a church may call you a sinner (that died out not too long ago it seems, if at all). And in a few cases fellow classmates (I've been called some sort of terrorist for being lefty, shocking isn't it?). So maybe it's just a different lifestyle. Maybe it is aliens, not sure but still an interesting theory.

Well i'm not sure about left handed people being smarter than right handers. But don't left handed people use a different side of thier brain? I've also heard that lefties are a bit more artistic.
Quite an interesting post.

Originally posted by hungryhippo
I've also heard that lefties are a bit more artistic.

If thats true I'm an exception.

As for lefties being smarter, I wouldn't call us smarter. It just so happens that many of us (including me) think differently which gives the illusion that we're smarter, that or it's a more efficent thinking process. Of course I strongly doubt my thinking process is all that efficent, so I might just be an exception.

So I gotta say, if aliens did a bit of genetic work with lefties I probably got the short end of the stick as far as artisticness goes. But like I said, I think it's just a different lifestle.

Very true, the lefties are evil attitude from the past.

If I am not mistaken, Old Latin for left-handed is sinister.

For right-handed is dextrous.

For both-handed is ambi-dextrous.

Just think of how the words above are used today, and you can see the way being a lefty was interpreted.

I don't know about being another race, just special members of this one.

On the brain-side issue, it is true that left-handed people are the only ones in the world in their right minds.

I'm proud to be a lefty. Wouldn't have it any other way.

I don't know about smarter but definitely not adept with scissors or can openers Also something about right hemisphere controlling creativity and languages.

There are interesting lefties like Ben Franklin, Lewis Caroll, Mark Twain, Ned Flanders, Fidel Castro, both Kennedy children (JFK), Bill Clinton, Kurt Cobain and Leonardo Da Vinci.

Also - Herbert Hoover, Harry S. Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush (senior) and Oliver North.

Big list here - too many to mention

Yeah but we're stuck with Flanders. Flanders of all people! That and Bin Laden. But hey at least we got Mr. Burns and Fidel Castro (j/k).

Anyhow I wonder how many righties are out there that were lefty but were "converted" by nuns and zealous teachers. Anybody here on ATS? One of my relatives was nearly converted so I'm thinking there might be more lefties by nature than we think.

I did a post on this a few weeks ago...

A few years ago, the late M.P. Bryden, a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, worked out with several colleagues a standardized questionnaire on handedness for use in any culture and then showed that it appears more often in some places than others.

Their research shows that in Canada and the U.K., the proportion of left-handers is about 11.5%. As one moves eastward the number falls: 7.5% in the United Arab Emirates, 5.8% in India, 4% in Japan. In Africa, 7.9% of those in the Ivory Coast and 5.1% of those in the Sudan were left-handed.

PDF linky here

And according to another study (this time by Wysocki), people of Asian (9.3%) or Hispanic (9.1%) lineage are slightly less likely to be left-handed than whites, blacks, or North American Indians.

Sooo...it appears that - at least without having further data to peruse - Western nations actually have a higher percentage of lefties than their more Easterly counterparts. Interestingly, in non-human primates the split seems to be about 50-50.

Something to add to your trivia collection

My mom was converted. She went to a catholic school and the nuns tied her hand behind her back and forced her to use the other one. She said it used to make her dizzy and want to throw up - such is the power of left-handedness.

Seriously though, i've read that to do that to children is to risk mental problems later. Plus it doesn't help being told they are devil spawn.

We modern lefties are lucky in comparison. Nothing a left-handed emporium wouldn't cure. Although I once shelled out £9 (US $17) for the novelty of a left-handed pen which was supposed to disperse ink according to which way you leaned your pen. GRRRRR.




[edit on 13-9-2005 by nikelbee]

There's apparently all kinds of confusion about what a "race" is.

"Race" is a division of human populations USUALLY along political lines. In our version of "race", there is generally some sort of noticeable skeletal difference. Parents of one race always produce children of the same race (remember, this is sociopolitcal, so the child is generally assigned to the same class/caste as the lowest caste/class parent.)

Handedness is simply a neurological preference/wiring difference and every living thing exhibits it. I have a cat who's "left handed" and one who is "right handed"and niether fuzzball is sneakier or more evil than the other. In some species, the "handedness"is divided fairly equally.

Equating lefthandedness with evil is an old form of magical thinking. It reasons that "all our tribe look just like us. Any child that doesn't is something brought among us by supernatural spirits to do harm or evil to us." So children would be killed for being red-headed, for having their upper teeth come in before their lower teeth did (yes, really. This practice still exists in tribal areas of Africa), for having odd moles, for being cross-eyed, for ... well, for just about anything imaginable. They were even killed simply for being a twin.

Primitive people have primitive science and don't know about genetic mutations and variations and recessive genes. So their response to something unusual is "this must be evil! kill it!"

...and that's where the "evil/sinister lefty" comes from.

I'm left handed and proud. I also read about leftie's being more artistic and being better communicators.

Also, I think left handed people think in differents ways to rightie's. Not that it is a downside to being right handed, it's just a case of thinking at different angles.



The leftie's will revolt and takeover mankind once again!!!

[edit on 13/9/2005 by redize]

I'm left handed and if you notice carefully this smilie......is too.

Sanc'.

Left handed people are right brain dominant to the norm, Im a leftie but can use both for some things and have been tested to use 45/55 in one silly test done on me. Everyones diferent but our makeup is the same genetic differences maybe but not alien or not a different race.

In 95% of right-handers, the left side of the brain is dominant for language. Even in 60-70% of left-handers, the left side of brain is used for language.

faculty.washington.edu...

hcs.harvard.edu...

Originally posted by cyberdude78
Anyhow I wonder how many righties are out there that were lefty but were "converted" by nuns and zealous teachers.

I've wondered about that aspect of is as well.

I remember only a few left handers in grade school - circa 1950's.
Nowadays I see a lot more left handers.
To me, that indicates a more enlightened approach to raising a left handed child.

A friend of mine, in grade school, wrote right handed, but played sports as a left hander.
I'm fairly sure his mom taught/forced him to write right handed and when he got old enough to take part in playground sports he played left handed.

My opinion is that we trend towards right handed or left handed due to the slight dominance of one hand or the other.
Slight being the key word.
And after a few years of acclimation to one hand or the other, we become right or left handed.

Along with that thinking we learn a particular skill with one hand or the other.

If you're right handed, ever use a left hander's glove to catch a baseball?

Or better yet, if you're a right handed guitar player ever hold the guitar as a left hander would and form mirror image chords?
You can do it, but it's clumsy

So maybe it's not the left handed/right handed bit so much, but simply learning particular skills with one hand or the other.

Good point.

I write with my left hand, but I couldn't throw a ball with it to save my life. When I owned a gun, my right hand took the lead.

(And this I know. I played netball for the county when I was in high school )

I use scissors with my left...but a lighter with my right. I can't use a frying pan in my right hand, and I use a knife in my left hand.

Maybe I'm just odd

I'm left-handed, but I only write with it, pretty much everything else I do with my right hand.
I think its a myth left-handed people are more artistic (certainly in my case), intelligent (absolutely in my case , etc... Are there actually scientific studies on that??

My grandmother was left-handed, but she was forced (oh the good old days...) to write with her right hand, so she was able to write with both hands. A part from her and myself, noone else in my family is left handed, not even my parents, so I guess it doesnt run in the family aswell

No, you're cool.

I am overwhelmingly lefthanded because my brother accidentally smashed me in the left side of my face and head with the flat of an ax on the backswing the summer I turned seven, and all my brains got squished over to the right side of my head.

I suffered partial paralysis to my right arm, (and left leg I think), but thanks to a great surgeon, you can't even hardly tell that I got whacked like I did. I was in an induced coma for three days, but came out of it and made a full physical recovery.

And the entire board goes, "Oh, so that's what happened to Icky to make him such a loose cannon!"

I'm left-handed & Evil

coincidence????

UGHHhh...Lefties they alway do things with the wrong hand. Its time to do things right people

I wouldn't say lefties are more artistic. They do have a definite advantage in baseball. If you throw left handed and kepp your velocity around 85mph then there is a shot for the Big Leagues. Also, fighting lefties have an advantage only because there are hardly any.

My grandmother was left-handed, but she was forced (oh the good old days...) to write with her right hand, so she was able to write with both hands. A part from her and myself, noone else in my family is left handed, not even my parents, so I guess it doesnt run in the family aswell

Interesting Zion...I think I am going to take the opposite approach with my kids they are allowed to write right handed but when it comes to throwing a ball they WILL throw lefty

There's apparently all kinds of confusion about what a "race" is.

I agree byrd:
Websters definition of race is.... A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: ex...the German race.