"The fighting hypothesis proposes that there is a so-called frequency-dependent maintenance of left-handedness. The main idea is that over the tens of thousands of years of human evolution, left-handers did have an advantage in fights due to a surprise effect. This gives them an evolutionary survival benefit since they win more fights."
"While this hypothesis is supported by some data from combat sports and other sources, it has been criticized for only focusing on left-handers and not really explaining why most people are right-handed."
"In contrast to the original fighting hypothesis, this new version explains the evolution of both right- and left-handedness. In the scientific article published in the journal Laterality, the research team presents a new form of the fighting hypothesis, the so-called modified fighting hypothesis."
The fighting hypothesis proposes that left-handedness evolved through frequency-dependent maintenance, where left-handers gained survival advantages in fights due to a surprise effect against predominantly right-handed opponents. Approximately 10.6% of the global population is left-handed, and scientists have developed theories to explain this distribution. While the original fighting hypothesis received support from combat sports data, it faced criticism for only explaining left-handedness without addressing why most people remain right-handed. A new modified fighting hypothesis addresses this limitation by explaining the evolution of both right- and left-handedness, providing a more comprehensive framework for understanding handedness distribution across human populations.
#handedness-evolution #fighting-hypothesis #left-handedness #evolutionary-biology #frequency-dependent-selection
Read at Psychology Today
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