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evolution

Left Handers Day & Lefties: how can we identify handedness (or hand preference)?

Today is (apparently) International Left Handers Day.... There are few lefties among the Archaeology staff... Prof Jon Adams (our UG admissions tutor) for one - he is usually recognizable when diving as the only left handed underwater archaeologist (just see the films of the excavation and lifting of the Mary Rose). More famously (?) Leonardo da Vinci was a leftie. So why is this? Population-level right-handedness is a defining characteristic of being human. Continue reading →

The Evolutionary Uses of Imagination

I have just published a post on fifteeneightyfour, the blog of Cambridge University Press. Here is a taster. You can read the remainder via the link at the bottom. Why are we so imaginative? What possible use is there in passing through the looking-glass with Alice or supposing that the moon is inhabited by creatures with aerials growing out of their heads? These are some of the wilder flights of our imagination and not shared by everyone. Continue reading →