DATES

22/03/2024

PHYLOGENEY AND ONTOGENY Anaxagoras and Aristotle were right when they respectively said: "man is intelligent because he has hands" and "man has hands because he is intelligent." Phylogenically and ontogenically, hands go hand in hand until they take us to the bipedal position that allowed the conquest of the planet: tools, weapons, vehicles, forms of communication, that is, everything, has depended on coordinating brain and hands. The child "manipulates" the world: he touches, caresses, explores his body and what surrounds, sucks his fingers, rummages and grabs (1). The use of the right or left hand, or the ability to be right-handed or left-handed, is a matter of degree. In all societies there have been lefties, but all have tended to be right-handed. Numerous socio-anthropological studies have also shown that ancient cultures, including extinct ones, were right-handed. Dextrality, which has not been able to be explained, nor the reason for the dominance of the left cerebral hemisphere, is more common (even in the majority of left-handers). ). The cave paintings show human faces with the gaze directed to the left (artistic tendency of right-handers to draw facial profiles to the left. These same Primitive paintings show human figures holding utensils and weapons in their right hands. We share with chimpanzees the characteristic of being the only mammals to have a dominant hand.