How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed

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Once there was a Neanderthal  who was cleaning an animal skin.

They were holding the skin between their teeth  while pulling it tight and scraping it with a stone tool.

And every now and then, the scraper would  slip and accidentally scratch their front teeth.

This individual lived about 130,000 years ago  in what's now Croatia.

And the scratches that these random accidents left on their teeth reveal  important clues about the hands that made them.

Based on the orientation of these scratches, and those on  teeth found from other sites, anthropologists have figured out that most Neanderthals were  right-handed, just like most of us Homo sapiens.

Seventy to 95 percent of us, to be exact.

Including the dude here.

But today, no other placental mammal that we know  of prefers one side of the body so consistently, not even our closest primate relatives.

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