SPORT

30/05/2018

"Oops! That child plays with the left. " Surely you have heard this phrase on occasion if you like the world of football. It is logical: left-handed people are not so common in football, hence this fact is highlighted. Now, why are there more right-handed people than left-handed people? The explanations are very varied, so here we go.
In the almost two centuries that have been studying the use of hands, researchers have published many hypotheses to why the right is the main hand among the population. According to statistics, between 70 and 95 percent of people write with the right, while the left is reduced to 5-30 percent. There are signs that genetics exerts some influence on this whole process, although it is not known how exactly. Similarly, there are also indications that right-handers during history are more common by social and cultural mechanisms.
The latter is due to the fact that numerous personalities -in this case teachers- have forced students to write for decades with the right hand instead of the left. Likewise, restrictive societies have fewer lefties than other more permissive societies.

In animals
MK Holder, a scientist affiliated with the Center for the Integrated Study of Animal Behavior at Indiana University, has already studied the use of hands in mountain gorillas (in Rwanda), as well as in chimpanzees, red colobus, red tail and gray-cheeked mangabes (in Uganda). Their inquiries revealed that monkeys and apes used to develop individual preferences when using the right or the left. However, there were no generalized signs in a whole population, as it does in the case of human beings.
In short, there are no fixed conclusions about why 7 out of 10 people are right-handed. However, it can be said that it is a mixture of genetics and intrinsic mechanisms within society itself.