Written By Brianna Ansaldo
 

If you’re left-handed you're part of a group that makes up about 10% of the population. And this rate of left-handedness has been consistent. Historical and archaeological records, reaching as far back as the Neanderthals, tell us that we’ve had this background rate of left-handedness for quite literally all of human history.

All of human history, that is, except for a small blip between the 19th and 20th centuries.

But before we explore that weird anomaly, one of the most interesting things about this story is how we have come to work out how many left-handers there have been across history.

From studying silhouetted hand prints to analysing paintings, drawings and sculptures, scientists have been able to chart left-handedness back to the Palaeolithic era. Amazingly, tooth striations from Neanderthals help us understand that there have always been lefties. In more recent history, researchers have turned to photos, hospital records and documentaries. Thank goodness for all those old docos that contain endless footage of people waving at the camera. We wave with our dominant hand, so these film reels are an accidental census of left-handedness.

But do you know what's weird about those images of waving crowds from the beginning of the 20th Century? The number of left-handers seems to drop off as they get younger.

Which is where the anomalous data enters. Pulling all the data on left-handers together from cavemen to now, we see there is a pronounced dip in left-handers in the 19th century.

So here's the question - where the hell did all the left-handers go during the 19th century?!

There are three main theories, but these still remain theories: death, fewer babies, or long-standing prejudice whipped up by seriously villainous people.

 
 
 

  • Rod 00:00

    I've always always loved a brain teaser, particularly if it's unexpected or a little interesting. And if it turns up in places that I would normally be doing normal, serious work, I love it when huge data sets will exist and be have little surprises hidden in them. And when they come from unusual sources, it makes it even more exciting, particularly from the public arena where people you wouldn't expect gather all kinds of unusual data about things you would necessarily consider looking into. And what we talked about today, or what will told me today, made me think a lot about how humanity is great at finding something to make other people feel bad about. And it really left me questioning what the hell is the natural way of things. Anyway, what is the right way to be a person? In this episode, we unpack that in a way you might not expect.

    Will 00:50

    The September 1986 issue of National Geographic, yeah, I got that one was a bit of a landmark event. See, it wasn't the cover story that was about a race to the North Pole between some dogs letters and some skiers. I don't know who won. It wasn't the other story that was about maybe a little bit overhyped about some invaders from outer space. They were just meteorites. No, it was the fact that this was the issue. When finally, finally, National Geographic had done something that everyone had always been waiting for everyone. They went scratch and sniff.

    Rod 01:26

    That is such a good idea when you're like taking pictures of let's say less than salubrious surroundings. Look, you ever wonder what camel ship smells like when it's mixed with human blood? Finally, this issue?

    Will 01:38

    Sadly, it wasn't quite what you're hoping for? It wasn't? Oh, you don't know what I'm hoping for? No, I know what you're hoping for people from the rest of the world. And you could scratch and sniff them. I wasn't that. It wasn't that.

    Rod 01:51

    Not just people like factories. I'd like to scratch and sniff a factory. Nice. And maybe architecture in general.

    Will 01:58

    Architecture floors, field of daisies. Underwater scenes.

    Rod 02:02

    You had me at dolphin.

    Will 02:03

    For that issue National Geographic had teamed up with the Manal Chemical Senses centre. Yeah, they're a research lab in Philadelphia focused on the sense of taste and smell. They wanted to run what's since been called the National Geographic smell survey. At heart, you know, they wanted they had a few questions. But the big one, they wanted to know if stuff got smellier, or less smelly as he got old. You know, does your sense of taste sort of fade fade out your sense of smell fade out, you know, like your eyes fade out to hearing fades out a little bit? We didn't have any data on that.

    Rod 02:39

    1986?

    Will 02:40

    1986. No one lived to be old at that stage. Yeah but you can't tell. You can't tell if they're all it's easy to do an eye test. You can line up a bunch of people. And you get them to look at the those little numbers or little letters and stuff like that. Yeah, you can do that. Easy to do a hearing test. But the smell test is a little bit trickier. You could probably put something at the end of the table and say who can smell this or not. But it's not as simple as that. So they wanted to know, yeah, do people lose their sense of smell as they get older?

    Rod 03:11

    No, yes, maybe?

    Will 03:12

    Here's a bit from the designers of the study. Charles, why Saki and Avery Gilbert? Does the world become less fragrant as we age? By analogy with vision and hearing, we might expect our olfactory sense to decline as we grow old. Okay. So with their partners at National Geographic, they sent out 11 million scratch and sniff cards to the readers of the magazine. Oh damn, like huge numbers. I got a picture of the scratch and sniff cards. They're bigger than I thought they're quite a foldout,

    Rod 03:42

    I don't want to burst your bubble. But a picture of a snip scratch and sniff card is lacking something. There's I don't know what it is, is a fundamental quality.

    Will 03:51

    I'm sorry, I wanted to I did I did actually try and hunt this magazine down for you. I've wanted to give you the full scratch and sniff experience.

    Rod 03:58

    There's no way this is an intact one. There's no way.

    Will 04:00

    I bet there is. I 100% guarantee.

    Rod 04:02

    There is there's definitely an intact one.

    Will 04:04

    You know, you know you were talking to me just the other day about your piles of The Economist, you know, you're subscribed to The Economist for a while you read some articles, like this is really good, I feel worthy. And then next month, you're like, cool, I'll get to that soon. And then the month after you like damn, I haven't got to the one before and then soon you've got a pile of them like half a foot high and you realise I shouldn't have this subscription. I stopped at 40 I guarantee you there are people with a nice shelf full of worthy National Geographics and sitting in their listener if this is you, sitting there in the September 1986 issue is your scratch and if you've got one that works, we'll send you a hat. So the scratch and sniff cards. They had six little panels. Yep. Now we call them scratch and sniff in the academic journal. They were micro encapsulated. odorants No, they weren't. They were scratch and sniff carts. They look they're boring. They were just like little panels. It doesn't look around. That's true. They had the smells of banana musk, cloves rose and A and and Rasta known y'all, that's a chemical that is found in both sweat and urine and mercaptans.

    Rod 05:07

    Ah, yeah, the things that you find on the on toilet seats.

    Will 05:12

    I'll tell you about mercaptans later, later, that's, that's not the story here. But my God, that is a story.

    Rod 05:19

    Okay, now I'm excited.

    Will 05:22

    So readers could give them an old scratch and sniff and then to help out because of science, they would fill in some demographic information and send them back. So..

    Rod 05:30

    Are you old? Yes or no?

    Will 05:31

    Well, old or young,

    Rod 05:33

    Strong smell.

    Will 05:35

    Oldies do this.

    Rod 05:36

    strong

    Will 05:38

    11 million cards. They got 1.4 2 million back. Damn. It's a good number. As they said in their paper, 114 megabytes of data.

    Rod 05:48

    How did they handle that? It was it was it was 86. That's like to like what you call it oceangoing construction contain the job you think

    Will 05:55

    It's all of it. It's all of it. I get it. They did say they had to drag this across to their supercomputer to analyse in 1996. But actually, you know, there are a couple of a4 pages sort of long folded out 1.4 2 million of them coming in, I guess over a three-month period or a four-month period. That's a lot. It's a lot of work just to analyse that.

    Rod 06:17

    And I like, when we talk about dragging something across now. We mean Oh, my wrist hurt because I dragged it with my mouse and they mean literally getting draft horses. Yeah, exactly. And scraping along a sled through there, whatever.

    Will 06:27

    I think even even the print run organising. It took weeks and weeks 11 million 11 million of these things. And it's a complicated print run because obviously they have to put the microencapsulated microencapsulated tools, scratchy Snuffy's. So what do they find?

    Rod 06:43

    Nothing. No. short episode this week. That was it.

    Will 06:49

    You don't have any guesses?

    Rod 06:50

    They found that it didn't get lower with certain smells got less with age and certain smells got stronger?

    Will 06:56

    No, they all got less with age. So it doesn't dementia. Can you do an episode? He gets better with age you get happiness more? Yeah, I did do that. Yeah. Sadly, most of our sense of smell fades out in 80s 90s. But it's weird. It's kind of some of it drops down quickly like Rose, you can smell it pretty well all the way till you're 70. And then it fades out. It's a subtle smell. Whereas sweat and urine, you sort of lose the ability to smell it gradually over time. We know how to test that one. There was another finding that old people tend to like the smell of sweat or urine more than young people. Not only do they not notice it, but they kind of like it.

    Rod 07:36

    I'll stay here.

    Will 07:37

    It was also a weird thing as people get older. They like the smell of roses less.

    Rod 07:41

    To be honest. This isn't my favourite smell anyway.

    Will 07:43

    It's not my favourite smell. Yes, I'm thinking am I gonna like it less when I'm older. Something to look forward to? Yes. Oh, some other things that they found. Women in general have a stronger sense of smell than men. Yeah, that's so they can pick a mate? Possibly. So they can smell something to do with babies and musky sweat urine. Well, to do with babies, it's interesting. Popular belief is that pregnant women have a keener sense of smell. Yeah, no, no, they have a weaker sense of smell less able to discern things than their non pregnant counterparts. It may be that they feel it more intensely, but less able to discern things. It doesn't take much to flick the trigger. Yep. Okay, three sets of workers, factory workers, office workers, outdoorsy workers, who do you think's got the strongest sense of smell factory workers know they're in the middle? They think they're extremely poor. But they're far above average at identifying odours. Okay, so outdoorsy people best No, they think they have the best Yeah, they're really below average outdoorsy people have have below average ability to work out these different odours.

    Rod 08:41

    I remember being told these office workers they shit on you office workers the best at work on you office workers come here mountain man. You can't can you? You know how I know? I work in an office.

    Will 08:55

    So suck that mountain man. Yeah, maybe it's just the office odours of banana, sweat, urine, Musk clothes, rose and mercaptans and slowly diminishing, we'll delete a vacuum. Maybe that's it. But they also found something that they weren't even looking for. Something that kinda blows my mind. It blew their mind and has blown a bunch of people's minds to you see in the demographic questions. They added a few other questions that were totally just hunches. You know, when you're doing your data you like, okay, we're focusing on smell, but let's add some other things as well. One of them was handedness. Left hand, right hand they differ. They thought, Okay, does that a hunch? Do lefties smell stronger or weaker than righties derive the smell stronger.

    Rod 09:43

    So people who like one kind of football code over were handedness. That's just an odd one. It's like people have three eyes and no elbows. I mean, like what? That's weird.

    Will 09:53

    I sadly don't have all of the other demographic data. Maybe it was football code. Maybe it was sadly no, no difference. No difference. between right and left-handed.

    Rod 10:01

    I'm shocked because I would have thought your hand in this would have a lot to do with your old factory capacity. That would have been my first guess.

    Will 10:07

    Total nothing burger. Yeah. But because they had data from 1.4 2 million people, yeah, covering people born all the way back to the 1880s through the 1970s. So in 1986, they had some 90 something year olds in there, and through different people in their teens and things like that. Okay, so they had a huge, huge data set. And they found something weird that had never been seen before, basically, rather than a consistent rate of lefthanders. Yeah, there was a relationship between the year someone was born and how likely they were to be a left-hander. I put it in more direct terms. Over the course of the 20th century, the number of left-handers boomed. You can see it just here. At the beginning of the 20th century, it's something like three or 4% of the population. Yeah, like they're not there at all. But from the 1950s on, there's three times like that up to like 11% of the population. And here's the question I want to explore today. What the hell happened to all the left-handers? Welcome to The Wholesome Show

    Rod 11:25

    A science Podcast it scratches and sniffs at the whole science.

    Will 11:30

    The Wholesome Show is me will grant and

    Rod 11:33

    Me Sniffy Rod Lambert's if you didn't know I was fatty boomsticks, in primary school briefly.

    Will 11:42

    You can't choose your nicknames.

    Rod 11:44

    I chose that one.

    Will 11:45

    You don't get up.

    Rod 11:45

    I chose that one, like Eminem style. You know, like, I'll give you one link in mind as much as all the other things you could call me.

    Will 11:51

    Just quick note on some sources. There's a bunch of great papers that sort of have on this question, but they're great papers anyway, to in particular by Ic McManus and Howard Kushner. They're really interesting. Also, thanks heaps to Joel mainland, for helping saw some images from the scratch and sniff survey. But I want to say before we dive in further, yeah, it's also really fascinating to me. There's huge gaps in this topic. Like there's there's stuff or the handedness, the handedness, right. There's bits and pieces in here, where I'm like, hang on, why don't we know what's going on? What what's caused this. And so that there's that we can cobble together a story and we can figure something out here. But man, in fact, as some people have said, and some people in the literature, left handers in a very real sense are people without a history.

    Rod 12:36

    Oh damn they're just walking around not knowing who they are. They don't like tumbleweeds, follow them

    Will 12:41

    It's help. It'd help. So before we explore the boom in left-handers in the late 20th century, gotta build a longer historical picture as Chris McManus. His article, he said, There's surprisingly little data on this, there are some things and I'll piece together what we've got, and then we'll go from there. So there's the scratch and sniff data first, that gives that great picture of the 20th century. And then a little bit of the 19th century, the earliest scientific estimate of the right of left-handedness was in 1871, by a guy named William Ogle. He asked 2000 patients, consecutive patients must be one after the other, whether they were right-handers

    Rod 13:16

    Well because if you ask them all at once, it gets very confusing trying to record the responses.

    Will 13:20

    Everyone, please yell out left or right. And I'll listen really closely. Okay, thank you. So out of 2000 He got 85, who said they were left-handed, so really 4.25%. Now since these patients were adults in 1871, that the the average year of their birth is 1835. So that gives us a bit of a picture that there was another another study in 1953 when the BBC asked people to mail in postcards describing their handedness. But that was a little bit biased.

    Rod 13:45

    Welcome to the Bahamas, I'm left-handed. My soul they're taking my soul. Everyone thinks that they did, then we're gonna look at their dead eyes.

    Will 13:47

    They did a show about left-hand right hand and all the lefties would have got excited and said and Maldon. So that didn't really work. But I think my favourite study was the study of documentary films shot around 1900 I mean, these aren't really documentary they just they just we've got a camera. Let's film some scenes and colonial assertions of grandness. Not even though there's no narrative, no narrative, it's just literally it's just street scenes. Here's a bunch of people watch people, but they put the camera out and a lot of people you know, they're all looking at this fancy camera. No, I got that's cool. Well, no, they're actually all waving.

    Rod 14:20

    With which hand?

    Will 14:22

    That's the thing.

    Rod 14:23

    I get it.

    Will 14:23

    And you typically wave with your dominant hand, they could get an image of what's going on here, okay, and they'd get people's age, and workout, which hand they're waving with. The weird thing they found is that there was substantially more common to wave with your left arm for the older people in the footage. So the people before born before 1850, they would wave with their left arm, but then you're getting younger and younger people and they're not waving with their left arm nearly so much. And we don't know whether they actually lift these or not, it just was a patent. We're assuming God. Now. There's a lot of data now on whether you wave with your dominant hand. It's not 100% Whether you're old or not, but whether you're old or not, we know we know that there's a rate at which you could wave with it's not the It migrates over time. No, that doesn't change over time. Okay, I was just checking because you never know. You're a science guy.

    Rod 15:05

    I know! I'm always looking for confounds bro

    Will 15:08

    With those couple of bits of data. McManus put together this picture that looks really, really interesting to me. Because it fleshes out that boom in the 20th century. And instead, what you've got a complete drop throughout the 19th century, and then picks up again, at about 1920 or something like that.

    Rod 15:26

    And we're talking like about 7%, drop?

    Will 15:28

    it goes from it goes from 10% ish, 10 or 11%. drops down to like 3%, or something at the end of the 19th century.

    Rod 15:37

    Look I'm not statistical but that seems significant. Something's going on.

    Will 15:41

    Yeah, but let's go back a little bit further, just because the data sets are fun. Data is getting harder. There's no documentary films, there's no surveys. There's some stuff that's going back literally hundreds of 1000s of years. So one group of researchers published an article in science, the journal looking at 5000 years of what they called, of artistic depictions of uni manual activities. You need manual, you need manual activities. Can you think of any? Yes, they're looking at paintings and drawings and sculpture. That's what I was thinking of people playing board games or throwing spears or writing I mean, 5000 years there's there's going to be heaps and heaps of mosaics from Rome. urns from Greece, that's true cave paintings, things like that. Not even going that far back. People throwing spears, those kinds of things, or playing board games.

    Rod 16:27

    The best ones always throw spears with both hands, though. I mean, just check the link. Well, they rule that out that rule jevelin in the Olympics, the winner is always throwing with both hands.

    Will 16:35

    But you know what's weird, not 8% of all of the yard going back is have a left hand to doing these things.

    Rod 16:43

    So you got to figure that's deliberate. Like they're not just someone's going oh I'm bored doing right-handed stuff.

    Will 16:47

    No they're like Gary, Gary - can you stand still and hold the spear like you're chucking it? Yeah. And I'm going to draw you Gary the spear Chuck and Gary, right is a percent chance being a left-hander.

    Rod 16:57

    I mean, look, I think it's very clever. Obviously, we don't know what survived and what didn't and what they're scraping WHAT THE HELL side the biggest the full population of all these objects. But that's why I'm giving you multiple still cool, it's still cool. Very clever to think that way.

    Will 17:09

    Another one looked at Bone Tools, stone and bone tools for a normal Stone Age near legit. They found a lot rate of left-handedness, six to 19%. Here's another one, you know, cave paintings of your hand like you can you can get some ochre and spit on your hand. I don't want to Yeah, no, and it goes up on the wall of the cave. But you can if you want. And it's weird. They show the same rate of left-handedness as as modern people like 10 to 11%. Even further back, you can go to the Neanderthals.

    Rod 17:38

    Are you sure they spit on it? Because what I'm thinking is if you're not sure they spit on it, then their hand they're putting up there will be the non-dominant hand because of using a dominant hand to capture the image. So it's actually the reverse. It was 11%. right-handers know. And everything flipped?

    Will 17:51

    No no, that's not how IT problem solved. No, that's not how it works. Not a guy. Let's go further back. Here's another one teeth striations. In the Anatole thief, this is when little evidence of of the meeting meet or something like that, or stuff getting caught in their teeth and using little tendons to sort of get things out. And you can tell theoretically, the direction that you're pulling from, you're pulling from your right hand or you're pulling from your left hand. And I guess they've only got 20 specimens.

    Rod 18:20

    What leads you to become that kind of researcher?

    Will 18:23

    I know I know. I mean, thanks. It's something that they've only got 20 specimens, but 10% indicate left-handed? Yes, they did. Which is it's it's getting a patent here. I know what the patent is. Now at the end, you're gonna go if not all bullshit. I'm not going to do that to you. I'm not going to do if you don't, I won't respect now, long story short, here's here's a graph back to 100,000 years ago, it's looking basically like we've got a background consistent rate of left-handedness. That is about 10%. Yep, for quite some time, quite some time. And then suddenly, in the 19th century, we dropped down, we dropped down to 3%. And then we come back in the 20th century. Back to that 10 10% or so. Vitamin D, do you think there was a difference in vitamin D in the 19th century?

    Rod 19:05

    For sure. Because of the mammoth?

    Will 19:09

    No, that's not a good theory. Give me more theory,

    Rod 19:12

    I don't have many more small brutal schooling systems inherited from the English people. That's my suspicion. So like, even when I was in primary school, they didn't tell a left hand as he couldn't be left-handed, but they certainly weren't super encouraging when you're learning to write.

    Will 19:28

    Look, it might come to that. It wasn't only that though. I mean, so so if you having left fewer left-handed people, there's basically three ways that can happen. Left-handed people dying younger, left-handed people having fewer babies, or fewer left handed babies being born. But yeah, that's a similar thing. Or some sort of secret erasure of left-handers.

    Rod 19:52

    Ah conspiracy.

    Will 19:52

    This is the one thing this is the thing. So I've gone through like, like heaps and heaps of papers for this. And there's definitely a lot of people indicating different sorts. Some things, but it's funny to me that there is not even someone coming a boiled together theory of all this still. It's a weird gap, but I got some thoughts. Okay, so the first thing, the first theory is

    Rod 20:10

    This is how awkward conversations start. But I got an idea. Look, I'm not I'm not, no, no, no, I've always considered you quite an exceptional thing. I'm sure you're going to revolutionise this field.

    Will 20:21

    So the first theory is that young people left-handed people died younger, but for some reason, you know, 19th century Yeah, it's like some sort of..

    Rod 20:28

    Because the Industrial Revolution couldn't use them. So they just died.

    Will 20:31

    Not couldn't use them. The Industrial Revolution, maybe made a whole bunch of dangerous machines and people worked in dangerous machines.

    Rod 20:38

    They're all made for right-handers, and they're all made for that sort of size so they couldn't really could use them or use them.

    Will 20:42

    Well that's one of the big theories. In the industrial revolution you get you get people using machines that are designed for right-handers, you know, you got to stop the giant bone crushing machine. Yeah, but the lever to stop it is on the right-hand side and poor old lefties got to reach over.

    Rod 20:55

    And your cotton gin just wasn't set up for your left-hander.

    Will 20:58

    Not at all. There's some interesting evidence on this that pointed a couple of different directions. So there's some modern studies, but some of them go back a while. One study in the British Medical Journal looked at 6000 cricket players won between 1840 and 1960. They found no significant relationship between mortality and handedness. So they didn't die younger. They didn't die younger according to this study. And that seems to be consistent these days. It seems like left-handers and right-handers live to be the same age these days. Okay, but they did find an accident element. left handedness was associated with an increased likelihood of death from unnatural causes. Especially during warfare. So they found a whole a higher mortality of young left handed males in World War One probably because they're using right-handed equipment.

    Rod 21:44

    So right-hand grenades are much harder to throw up they get stuck and the helmet doesn't fit. It's a right boots on the wrong feet, because the laces are right-handed all of that yeah. I get that. Pants are on backwards.

    Will 21:57

    Enough to delay you a tiny bit get you caught in a situation where the Hun is coming over the fence and your bayonets on backwards. There's some more modern studies that look at this accident rate. One looked at American college students and found that left-handers were more likely to report having an injury requiring medical attention in the last two years.

    Rod 22:16

    I know what it isn't clumsy. Ah, left-handers are just clumsy. At least in that period.

    Will 22:23

    No, they're not. They're not clumsier. They seem to have the same skills.

    Rod 22:27

    Did they test for that? Did they use Hofman's clumsy index or not?

    Will 22:32

    They didn't use they should have used or should, it seems to be on a neutral playing field. Like where things are fully designed for either left hand or right hand depending on who you are, or it's actually a neutral game. left-handed and right handed seem to be roughly the same level of skill. Okay. However, in a world that is more designed for right-handers, which a whole lot of things are like heaps and heaps of things. So it does look like there is potential that the world is more set up for right-handers, and that they may have died young, I think there's no doubt the world is set up for right handers, particularly in the industrial revolution. It wasn't a safe place at all. But there's more to this because well doesn't fully answer all of the graph before. No. So the second theory is that left-handers had fewer babies

    Rod 23:17

    Because they're uglier, and no one wants to have the intercourse with them.

    Will 23:19

    Do you know that's what they said that they did. They didn't use those terms. They used sciency terms.

    Rod 23:26

    So less desirable than an ocular.

    Will 23:29

    I'm sorry. Yeah, that's crazy. Well, remember, of course, ugliness is a societal judgement. It's just construct, but it is a construct made by humans to judge other humans.

    Rod 23:44

    And yeah, there are some biology that tries to argue stuff that was more has changed. Okay. So you can imagine you're sitting, you're in a bar, you're looking across a like a rather attractive person. And then you see them reach out and pick up the drink with the left hand and you just chunder.

    Will 23:59

    Not quite. But back then. Yes. So today, today, it looks like double right-handed parents left and right, or lefty left parents have the same number of kids, like, you know, varies by country. Of course, you know, in America at the moment, it might be 2.5 kids per couple but you go back 100 years, beginning of the 20th century, righty righty parents had 34% more children than lefty lefty parents like it's it's it's totally measurable. 3.1 children per righty, right. Couple 2.3 children per lefty left couple people say you know could be accidents in disfiguration. So the ugliness it could be that there was a whole lot of stigma around the became more obvious in the industrial revolution.

    Rod 24:45

    Also how do you have the intercourse left-handed? I mean, that's a mystery. I mean, you just did by accident thrusting movement with your hips. You're like, I own I totally want to do this with you.

    Will 24:56

    I want to ask intimate questions here but you're in a lefty righty relationship. So

    Rod 25:02

    I am, it's great.

    Will 25:03

    How could you possibly get the bits to touch?

    Rod 25:06

    books.

    Will 25:08

    You stand on books, lots of scholarly relationship.

    Rod 25:11

    Of course it is we're intellectuals. It's a house full of PhDs like this one.

    Will 25:14

    What they're saying is, is potentially at the beginning of the 20th century, you know, maybe coming off that industrial revolution thing, but maybe ugly, clumsy, maimed, the good could be or a lot of social stigma. I'll come to the social stigma beaten down. Yeah. So it seemed like it meant that they were potentially less desirable on the marriage market. If you're less desirable than it means you're more likely to marry a bit later. So you're not likely to get as many kids, that kind of thing. So it seems like it was enough of an effect to actually compound that they could actually see the difference in lefty lefty,

    Rod 25:46

    I do wonder were there an appreciable percentage of people who would look at someone and they just all I knew was they saw them do something left handed, like they might have found them attractive otherwise, then they see the left hand and moving and they're like, eh.

    Will 25:57

    Yes, I guarantee it. I mean, I'm going to tell you some stories about some people in the second group, almost guarantee, there were people that would go, Oh, that's gross. That is so wrong. touch anything with that hand. lefties out there, you probably know this now, but not compared to your grandparents or great grandparents. People have been prejudiced against left handers for a very, very long time.

    Rod 26:21

    The only one I know is your obviously a witch. That's the only one I'm aware of.

    Will 26:26

    There's all sorts of prejudice is and just about every culture, there is a few cultures that celebrate left-handed people, but it's not super common.

    Rod 26:34

    Similarly, there are a few cultures that celebrate what we would call extremely mentally ill people and call them touched by gods and stuff. I assume it's as rare.

    Will 26:41

    Well, even I assume when they say touched by God, it still would be constrained into certain bits of culture doesn't mean you can you can do everything.

    Rod 26:48

    And obviously God touched him with his right hand. God doesn't even have a left hand. Well, God has to write hands. That's the spirit that's,

    Will 26:56

    You know that your way that they would. But actually, it's really interesting, like language is one of the deepest places that we can see all of this. This prejudice. This is great article by I should have practised this name before I go, Vols. syphon. Hoval. Voltage syphon Hovell. That sounds so he looked at the Indo-European languages Shifen I think it's Shifen Hoffa. Shifen Hafele. And the first thing is really interesting, the terms for right and left. Yeah, they don't go back to one set of opposites. Like they don't come from opposites. They've got to their etymological roots in a number of different core semantic concepts. So right is almost always thought of positively Yes. And there's never any negative association. They couldn't find any negative association with not right was used for, for godliness for godliness. You know, Jesus sits to the right-hand side of the word, right. I was gonna say, right, yes, they come from similar roots left is nearly always negative.

    Rod 27:56

    The things to be prejudiced about. Oh, my God, we're good at this as humans, like, I've got one-handedness.

    Will 28:02

    It's this bullying by like, 90% of people going well, this is one I use those the good ones and screw you other people.

    Rod 28:08

    Look, you know, I'm not against bullying. I think it's productive. And it helps humanity, obviously, you know, it strengthens culture. But you got to make it worthwhile. handedness is not enough. Are you saying this is not worthwhile, if it's not enough, that I need to double down on it something else that it's really almost immediately?

    Will 28:22

    The fact that they got rid of, you know, hundreds of millions of left-handed people in the 19th century sounds like a fair bit of bullying

    Rod 28:29

    Got rid of? Are you revealing the end?

    Will 28:32

    I'm not saying I'm not saying that. But if they're not lefthand people, it's kind of a gap. It's kind of a gap. The other one that blows my mind. The scientific word for right-handed, is Dextral. Like dexterous and Dexter, the serial killer so you know, scientific word for left handed evil, yes, sinisteral evil, and it comes from the same roots as sinister. It just means sinister like the we still describe it in the scientific literature.

    Rod 28:57

    It's Latin based I think..

    Will 28:58

    It's Latin. It's Latin, but

    Rod 29:00

    the Italian sinister is left, isn't it?

    Will 29:02

    Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And right is the other one. Charles. Why did you why did you? Why did you raise that if that was?

    Rod 29:09

    Because I forgot. haven't read any lit reviews.

    Will 29:11

    But isn't that just it just blows my mind that we still use the word that comes from the word sinister for left hand and Dextral, dexterous for the right-hand side course we do. But at this point, you know me, you got to you got to throw in a villain to connect with the villain left-handed. No, he definitely was not well, then he can't be a villain. I want to go back to the point that I was saying before. There are gaps in this literature. It's really interested in trying to piece them together. But CSRA Lombroso was born in in Verona in 1835. He came from a line of wealthy rabbis. He studied a range of things at universities in Padua, Vienna and Paris, including literature, linguistics and archaeology and handedness. He eventually settled on medicine. He worked for a while as an army surgeon before taking a post as a lecturer at his old uni.

    Rod 30:00

    Let me guess as an Army soldier, he did a lot of amputations.

    Will 30:02

    I don't know. But his career really kicked off when he got a job taking charge of the insane asylum at Pissarro in 1871.

    Rod 30:09

    What a dream appointment. What can you do whatever you want.

    Will 30:13

    And from there, he said about doing a couple of things. He launched what he called criminology. He is He was the first to use the term criminology and his version of criminology was basically measuring things on the human body and Sam repository. Yes, yes, he was the father of that. Now we're not diving into all of that. But so that's what nine other episodes at least no doubt, but his general theory suggested that criminals are distinguished from non criminals by multiple physical anomalies. Yes, he posted like...

    Rod 30:42

    holding a gun, a bag marked loot t-shirt that's black and white striped bandits hamburgerlar mask?

    Will 30:49

    He postulated that criminals represented a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type of person characterised by physical features reminiscent of apes, lower primates, and early humans, and to some extent preserved he said in modern savages, cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo. He said that there are biological throwbacks. So it's not their fault. It's no it's not their fault. We're looking up but it's not your fault. Well, he would definitely lock them up. Yeah, so did a whole bunch of post-mortem examinations and anthropometric studies of criminals the insane and normal individuals, but he didn't do any stats. He just measured them and put them in a shelf. He became convinced that the born criminal could be anatomically identified by such items as a sloping Ford is of unusual size, a symmetry of the face. Asymmetry.

    Rod 31:35

    Yeah, not. They have symmetry,

    Will 31:37

    Asymmetry, asymmetry, excessive length of arms. And then he went even further he'd said, you know, specific criminals, so thieves or murderers or rapists could be distinguished by specific characteristics. Would it be stealing, murdering and raping? It's no it's about their ear lobes or their head shape? That was my next guess. Like their physical bodies. He could say, yes, you have you have a thief.

    Rod 31:59

    You have the body of a rapist like what the fuck.

    Will 32:01

    He also maintained that criminals had less sensitivity to pain and touch, more acute sight, lack of moral sense, an absence of remorse, more vanity, impulsiveness, vindictive, effectiveness, and cruelty. And lots of tattoos. Born with them, though. Besides the born criminal Lombroso also identified criminal Lloyd's although little criminals, criminal, criminal, it's occasional criminals. Oh, you're more you pass time rather than criminals by passion. Yeah, okay. Anyway, let's get back to the question, because he didn't like left handers. Why would he? He said that as man advances in civilization and culture. He shows an always greater right sidedness as compared to women and savages. Who, even when they are not properly left-handed, have certain gestures and movements, which are a species of left-handed.

    Rod 32:49

    Yes. Now that I hear it out loud. I'm like, Ah, yeah, I love even when

    Will 32:53

    they're not left-handed. They kind of they kind of do things that are left handed.

    Rod 32:57

    Yeah, I know you act it. You act leftish.

    Will 33:00

    combining left-handers with left ciders. Lombroso found that left-handed people are more numerous among criminals and sensitive left sided people among the lunatics.

    Rod 33:09

    So did he cover ambidextrous? Was that just too much? Too complicated?

    Will 33:13

    It's too complicated. This led Lombroso to formulate a simple hypothesis that criminals are more often left-handed than honest men. And lunatics are much more sensitive, left-sided. So the criminals Yeah, left-handed and lunatics. They feel left sided

    Rod 33:28

    a little bit, you can tell whenever they see things, it's always on the left.

    Will 33:32

    The healthy man thinks and feels with the left lobe, you know, they're crossover. Yeah, the abnormal thinks wills and feels more with the right. He didn't say he didn't say that all that found people are wicked. But he said that left handed did not say,

    Rod 33:47

    Well, look so to all of you. But he was convinced some of them I assume are fine.

    Will 33:51

    People that are left-handedness united to many other traits may contribute to form one of the worst characters among the human species, it stands to reason with everything else.

    Rod 33:59

    He's told us, it's got to be the true.

    Will 34:01

    So his thinking started to flood through in the late 19th century, to a bunch of places. And you get a bunch of people who are saying that, well, maybe we need to do something about this. This, let's call it pseudo-scientific thinking led to what now we're going pseudoscientific led to justifying the practice of what's been called retraining. I'll tell you more about that, after this message. We don't have all of the history of what happened. We know that from lumbar osos time onwards, people became staunch advocates of curing left-handedness.

    Rod 34:41

    Sure, we've heard how terrible they turned out. So that makes sense. What do you address the hand?

    Will 34:46

    So there's people that said that left-handedness is a disease and it should be prevented and corrected. So there's a famous pamphlet from this sort of time by JW Conway, the prevention and correction of left handedness in children He, he followed lumber ISOs thinking that left-handedness was a deterrent in to succeeding in the newly industrialised world. And to be honest, there were there were absolutely things pointing in that direction, Trump, but his solution wasn't great.

    Rod 35:15

    The trick is don't adjust anything else. Change the kids.

    Will 35:18

    Change the kids not the world. No change the kids. He recommended training children from infancy to overcome left-handedness, which came as a result of parental indifference to the seriousness of the handicap. always blame the parents, which was a sinister condition. So it's interesting. They keep using the word sinister or both as an adjective to say how bad it is. And as the name of the condition as well. Yeah, it was a disease that needed to be recognised along the same lines as rickets, pneumonia and colic.

    Rod 35:45

    The kid doesn't seem well wait a minute, what handler right with where they pick their nose with left hand. That's why.

    Will 35:51

    There's a bunch of people writing letters into big journals, British medical journal Brain, arguing the practice was beneficial course that you could stamp out the this newly recognised disease, the curse of left-handedness. Now, this is a bit that's weird to me. It's not really that well documented, I can find a bunch of anecdotes, and I'm sure everyone has heard stories of what has happened. But there's no systematic documentation, as far as I could find no systematic documentation of what people did to retrain or cure left handers. But basically, it was a bunch of child torture

    Rod 36:25

    I've definitely heard anecdotes from people who were my parents age or even a bit younger.

    Will 36:29

    Yeah. Their stories of tying up the left hand. So the right might be used when they're at school. That was, I think, the standard, I read one, about someone having their left arm bandage to their body for a period of months, sweet, obviously, physical punishment, so caning children for using their left hand for anything like that. In schools, that would be if they write with their left hand, or if they throw a ball or if they pick up their food to eat with their left hand, anything like that won't be whacked across the hands, they would have a book thrown at them.

    Rod 37:00

    Well, that would work. you'd remember.

    Will 37:01

    I couldn't find any examples of this. But I did. I've heard before of specific desks that will lock a kid's arm behind them. scruffs. Now, of course, this involves teachers. But a lot of parents were doing this as well. Yeah, a couple of the stories, I could find that there's a couple of recent inquiries going around, not into left-handedness, but this would come up. And so there's one about abuse that a guy named John McCourt suffered at the hands of some nuns, I remember were not, but they're women of God. I remember when I was about five years old, being constantly beaten by one particular nun, to get me to stop riding with my left hand. He said it was common practice at the time. Jim, who told his story to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He was singled out and victimised by his primary school teacher, Mr. Richardson, for no reason other than he happened to be left handed. If he saw me riding left handed, Jim told the commissioner, he'd pulled my hand over the edge of the desk, and he had a three foot rule with a metal edge on it a dozen times over the knuckles, or Mary who was enrolled in a Methodist school at the age of three. Part of the standard discipline during this three Yeah, during those formative years meant reprimanding children for being left handed. That punishment included beating the left hands of children with objects such as canes, sticks, slamming books into their fingers in order to train them to use their right hand, not only to write with bird, any activity, to use your left hand was considered a cardinal sin, an indication of a tainted soul.

    Rod 38:25

    Oh for fuck's sake.

    Will 38:28

    See, Mary said the the abuse continued for years she was forced to learn to write with her right hand to avoid persecution and worse, avoid suspicion that her spirit was influenced by the forces of evil.

    Rod 38:39

    You tiny brain dick heads, and we're talking this is 19th 20th century.

    Will 38:44

    This is definitely 20th century because this is testimony that has gone before inquiries recently, this while while the number. Recently? Yes, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story in a bit. While the numbers of left handed people bottomed out at the end of the 19th century 20, early 20th century sight 3%. These practices continued for a long time.

    Rod 39:07

    So they didn't disappear. They just kept the quiet.

    Will 39:09

    Well, yeah, the practices became less common. All I'm saying is we could probably extrapolate back to the 19th century, and just say there was so much worse. Yeah, there are some documented campaigns like this just cropped up in the literature, talking about the trying to get rid of left handedness, a campaign in schools in New Jersey, to cure left handedness. So this was in the 30s. In the course of four years, left handedness was reduced from 250 cases to 66. Cases CES. Yeah. And you can assume that's the methods they use the head teachers being hyper vigilant checking any moment a kid would use their left hand for anything and beating them up. What does that mean your job like I want to work with kids and my work with I mean, bash, bash them up so that they don't be left-handed anymore. What do you do? I'm a teacher. There's also heaps of famous people. King George the sixth to the Queen's the old queens, Dad. Yeah, the king Speech is all about his his stutter. There is a lot of people that say a lot of that was caused by the switching. So for a lot of people stuttering seemed to associate with the switch from left-handedness to right-handed. So even back to the upcoming monarch. Yes. They didn't know Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan would be upcoming presidents, of course. But they too were forced to switch as kids.

    Rod 40:21

    Did it work. Did it work? Did Reagan continue to write?

    Will 40:25

    Yeah it definitely worked. It definitely there are there are a lot of people that switched. There are a lot of people. And it is still debated, but it's not locked in. There's a lot of people that switched and then had speech difficulties throughout their lives.

    Rod 40:39

    I'm not left-handed, obviously, because I'm pure of spirit and you know, Clevite bus. I've tried to write left-handed. It's not great. It's not great when I wrote right-handed?

    Will 40:46

    Well, if you get beaten up every time, I don't think it's gonna make me want to write. No, it's not. But it's gonna make you not want to get caught writing with your...

    Rod 40:53

    Here's your solution. I'm just not gonna write it all. Yeah, I'm gonna eat with my face.

    Will 40:57

    It definitely did seem to work. There's some interesting stories of people accidentally being forced to switch led, so not deliberate, like they lose the use of their their right hand or their left hand. And then so using the other one, and there's definitely you know, so that's, that's good evidence of cranial brain, then right with the other hand.

    Rod 41:14

    Yes, absolutely. You can try it. One thing I do remember doing because we're obsessed with Hanbal. In primary school, every human is loved. Like we're totally obsessed, and I started going well, with a couple of my buddies. We're getting pretty good at this. I need to be as good as my left as my right. And I got close.

    Will 41:30

    It's tough, though. But that but certainly just practice practice is one. One of the areas where left handers have a huge advantages in a lot of sports, because we don't know what to do. Ya know, it's impossible, possible for a right handed to play anything against the left.

    Rod 41:43

    When I first left handed rugby player in my youth, I just basically picked myself and ran the other way. I didn't know what to do. It's terrifying.

    Will 41:48

    So the other thing is how widely this happened. And I've given you you know, an American version of the story, but it's, it blows my mind. In the Soviet Union. All left-handed students were forced to write with their right hand in the Soviet education. Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the Iron Curtain countries, all made right-handed writing compulsory in school. In Albania, left-handedness was actually declared illegal and punishable as a crime.

    Rod 42:18

    Great data that shows left-handed people tend to be criminals, no doubt. perfect.

    Will 42:22

    It's the best data you can get clean, beautiful criminals. Here's proof. A study in Taiwan found 59% of children had been forced to convert from left-handedness to right-handedness. In Japan, nearly 99% of left-handers were forced to convert. China now claims that less than 1% of students are left-handed. I think you looked at the word proudly from the Oklahoma news, September 2015. Okay, my mother, Alicia Sands was helping her four year old son with his homework, when suddenly she noticed the change. Previously, just like her, he'd been doing everything with his left hand. He'd been picking things up throwing things batting, writing, colouring, always using his left hand. Alicia asked, why are you writing with your right hand? I just asked, is there something that your teachers have said about your hands? And he raised his left one and says, this one's the bad one. Alicia centre. Sent that Oklahoma did you say 2015 Alisa sent the teacher a note queering this and got a strong response back from the teacher. The teacher sent an article calling left-handedness unlucky, evil and sinister,

    Rod 43:32

    You fucking baby, Lord of the Rings should not be your source material for how to live a life. Magical thinking bullshit.

    Will 43:40

    Can you imagine as a parent going, What the fuck are you doing? Training my left-handed kid to use their right hand and getting not I'm so sorry. I didn't know. But instead, he could be the work of the devil. Here's an article from the Christian monitor weekly science dumb like That's fucking outrageous. So 2015? 2015. It is going on? Probably not so much in Western countries at the moment it is absolutely going on in a lot of countries around the world. Absolutely. And it is still happening definitely in a number of places in all throughout the...

    Rod 44:15

    You know what's weird about that? There's enough terrible stuff, right? There's enough things to confront. There's enough things that can screw you up from childhood and up. Why choose new ones or extra ones? Don't you have enough to worry about? Don't you have enough to worry about?

    Will 44:30

    The devil's gonna get him through left hands.

    Rod 44:32

    There's so many other there's all these problems going on. But like I feel like I need one more. I need one more thing to be angry about and correct. I know left-handedness.

    Will 44:41

    It does my head. I don't like these people. I don't like them. Well, look, the 20th century boom and left handers has been used and now I think it's not a boom. It's a return to return to historical conditions. But it's been used a lot by a lot of trans advocates because it makes a great metaphor a lot of anti trans pundits are saying what's going on there's, there's suddenly so many more trends and you look at you look at in younger generations, there's a huge growth in a whole bunch of different gender identities, but also a whole bunch of different sexual orientations. And so the right wing people are like, Oh my God, you're telling all these people to...

    Rod 45:17

    It's critical gender race theory bullshit left-leaning...

    Will 45:21

    They point to this and say, maybe when you stop repressing people for their handedness or for their gender identity, maybe they go back to what the historical norm might be, or what our bodies actually want us to be. No, that sounds evil. So I reckon the thing that happened, I reckon, in the 19th century, yes, there was actually a pressure. I think left-handed people probably had more accidents. And that probably meant they died a bit younger, and probably meant they had fewer kids. And then you got a whole bunch of pseudo-science bankers taking this up and going, you know what? Also, if we retrain them out of existence, then we won't have left-handed people anymore.

    Rod 46:02

    Stop it. Come on. Again, again, like come on, there are better things to worry about.

    Will 46:06

    There you go. So look, support the left hand of people in your life and just recognise

    Rod 46:12

    I'm not an idiot, they're evil. I realised that but just...

    Will 46:14

    Let them be. Let them be. But I was gonna try and do this whole episode with my right arm. You should have asked me to strap it down. I was thinking about...

    Rod 46:25

    Why doing it or you find out later I don't know if I want to.

Brianna Ansaldo
Previous
Next