Why are most people right handed?

Question from Kay Taylor

Nobody knows exactly why most people are right handed. One theory is that it is as a result of natural selection. Most people have their speech and language centre in the left hemisphere of the brain, which also controls movements of the right hand. Therefore, producing written language may have become linked with being right haned over thousands of years. Alternatively, hand preference may be genetic, with the variation of the gene that results in right-handed dominance inherited from your parents more reliably than the one for left-handedness.


Answered by Katy Sheen for Brain Dump in How It Works issue 112

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