Handedness in past human populations: Skeletal markers

Abstract

Although it is generally believed that right-handedness has predominated in all human populations since at least the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens, the evidence has rarely been studied in its entirety. This paper contains a review of the principal skeletal indicators of handedness (cranial and post-cranial), and an introduction to their use to estimate the prevalence of left and right handedness in the past. The role of such reviews is to enable us to assess the testability of genetic models of human handedness and of its evolution, using anthropological and archaeological data.