![]() ![]() Another Woodley paper argues that in Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia-in the absence of predators, food shortage or adverse weather conditions-the population skyrocketed, just as happened after the Industrial Revolution. This rise in “sinistrality”, they demonstrate, would also reflect decreasing intelligence in Western countries, because mutational load makes the nervous system work less well and so modestly impairs the working of the brain.īut there’s a very interesting wrinkle to this rise in our use of the sinister hand. And this is exactly the finding of a recently-published study by British psychologist Michael Woodley of Menie and his team.īased on studies of photographs of people waving, the team find that left-handedness has increased from 3% of the British population in the mid-nineteenth century to 12% today. So, if Darwinian selection has collapsed, then we should be becoming more mutated and, therefore, more left-handed and higher in all of the correlates of left-handedness, including low intelligence. Pedophiles are not only much more likely to be left-handed but also to display other evidence of mutation, such as attached earlobes and facial asymmetry. Unsurprisingly, southpaws thus end up with low a lower average socioeconomic status. Unsurprisingly, therefore, being left-handed is associated with numerous markers of “developmental instability”-that something has gone wrong a situation generally reflective of “mutational load.” Left-handed people display elevated levels of depression, autism, slightly lower IQ (an average difference of about one point), outlier high IQ (which often happens due to mutation as it is associated with poor mental and physical heath) or outlier low IQ, psychopathic personality, homosexuality, pedophilia, transsexuality, and of numerous physical conditions, such as allergies. We are evolved to be symmetrical-that’s why the essence of beauty is symmetry-so it follows that left-handed people have more mutant genes, causing asymmetry directly or a poor immune system, meaning they are not strong enough to maintain a symmetrical phenotype in the face of disease. This can only happen if they have an asymmetrical brain structure, which uses the right-side more than it should. According to Corballis, if somebody is left-handed, this means that they are right-hemisphere dominant for language. ![]() So, the “norm” is to be left-hemisphere-dominant for language. Increased use of the right hand meant that we started employing the right hand for pretty much everything. They used their right hand, because this is controlled by the left hemisphere. As our ancestors learned to walk upright, they started using their hands to communicate as well as their voices. The left hemisphere controls vocalization in most species. However, we are not evolved to be left-handed to any significant degree.Īccording to New Zealand psychologist Michael Corballis, the human propensity to be right-handed is caused by our heightened ability to communicate. Bush, Reagan, Carter and Ford would all have probably smudged their writing when they were at school. Are we in our own “Mouse Utopia” in which Darwinian selection has collapsed? The latest piece of evidence for this: we are becoming more left-handed.Ī surprising number of recent US presidents have been southpaws. ![]() The results were horrifying: increasingly bizarre behaviour patterns, a collapse in reproduction, eventual extinction. ![]() In creating this “Mouse Utopia” (pictured right) the experiment replicated post-industrial conditions in the West, where child mortality has fallen from 40% to about 1% since 1800, due to dramatically improved medicine and living conditions. Its aim was to understand what would happen if Darwinian selection massively weakened. Led by the startlingly creative scientist John B. See also: Of Mice and Men: ”Spiteful Mutations” Look Bad For The Westīetween 19, a fascinating experiment took place at the University of Maryland. ![]()
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