THE proportion of people who are left-handed was the same 30,000 years ago as it is today, according to a study comparing the artistic skills of Palaeolithic painters and modern students. This is further evidence that the evolutionary pressures maintaining left and right-handedness are independent of culture.
Charlotte Faurie and Michel Raymond at the University of Montpellier II, in France, examined 507 handprints in 26 caves in France and Spain that date from between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. The negative prints were made by blowing paint from a pipe at a hand pressed against the cave wall. Twenty-three…
