July 2004 - Nuneaton & North Warwickshire Family History Society

Nuneaton & North Warwickshire Family History Society - Journal Page 11
One of the most neglected genealogical techniques
By Alan F Cook
Are you left-handed? (sinistral,
sinistrad, sinistrorsal, laevogyrous,
gauche, caggy-handed, cawk-handed,
cack-handed, south-paw etc. etc.)
You may wonder where that came
from in your family tree. We “southpaws”
have a lot to thank Dr Marian
Annett for – she is probably the world’s
leading authority on the subject and is
based at Leicester University.
She has virtually proven that “lefthandedness”
is inherited from the
mother’s side – the actual chromosome
culprit is called the Right-Hand-Shift
Gene.
Left-handedness has all sorts of
associations and connections: e.g.
trades, careers, professions, illnesses,
allergies, educational achievement.
The basic facts appear to be this:
biological development of higher
mammals would tend to produce totally
ambidextrous animals. Along comes
the Right-Hand-Shift Gene that
produces very Right-Handed people.
The rest of us become labelled as “lefthanders”
– when in fact we are
probably ambidextrous – and therefore
higher up the evolutionary ladder!!??
(if you believe in that).
It is hard to date the earliest persecution
or prohibition of the left-hander.
Physical and Social Anthropologists
suggest that most prehistoric people
“groomed their posteriors”, after
ablutions, with that hand - because the
human anatomy made it easier to do it
that way. It did not take ethical or
religious protocols to focus on that.
Hence the perennial and enduring
ideology of right-handedness becoming
associated with purity, truth, skill and
rectitude.
The world, and its technology evolved
to create the right-handed world!
Yet, in many enclaves, Left-Handers,
proved to be exceptionally gifted and
different. The list of the “World’s
Greatest” has many left-handers! It is
probably down to the way the brain
integrates all its processing power.
Modern humankind is so used to
writing, reading, and thinking
abstractly, it forgets the visuo-spatial
abilities that made us different. The
ability to detect thousands of subtle
smells is now lost; the ability to detect
weather by our senses is also
redundant. The eye-hand-ball coordination
that produces a “John
McEnroe” is truly prodigious (he is
left –handed!)
What is the bottom-line for the Family-
Historian who is tracing the pedigree?
Do not ignore handedness! The realm
of DNA testing is a thing for the future.
The possibility of other exotic clues
like blood groups, hair and eye colour,
finger and toe prints, genetic illnesses
are beyond most of us. The Handedness
is not!! People were very notable for
their handedness. Family folklore
usually records people who wrote in an
”odd fashion”! (I can write with either
hand, mirror, upside-down and
backwards, etc.!) At one point in school
I was writing backwards, starting at the
right-hand side and moving to the lefthand
side of the page.
It may not be easy, however. I am lefthanded
– or should I say mixed up (or
ambidextrous) I play most musical
instruments with the left-hand! Sport is
a mess – tennis, badminton, bowling
and kicking with left! golf and cricket
bat with the right!
In my family tree, however, there were
cohorts – may be they were “LEFTIES
in disguise”. My Mum had a good
visual memory and found arithmetic
difficult, yet her dad could not write,
but was good at mental arithmetic. Her
granddad was an alderman, mayor and
a solicitor at Coventry.
I have been unable to trace any
recorded “left-handers” anywhere in
my family tree.
Jo-Anne, my wife, (very right-handed)
has several “lefties” in her whole
family tree (mum, brother, sister,
uncles, aunts) – yet none of our sons
show any “leaning to the left”. (None
of them seem to obey Mendelian
inheritance rules anyway!) No one in
our families, for generations, has blue
eyes, yet Richard and Matthew have
blue eyes!!!!!
The right-hand world does not seem to
realise that we have to do visuo-spatial
conversions in our mind. Whenever a
“right-hander” demonstrates anything, I
have to transform it (by some weird
cerebral mirror!) Yet I am not alone –
in the Universe there are many
wonderful molecules and viruses that
are left-handed!
There are statistical predictions that by
2050 the “Western-world” will have
about 50% “left-handers” in it.
References
1. Marian Annett: Left, Right Hand
Brain: The Right Shift Theory.
Lawrence Erlbaum. 1985 - (very
scholarly).
2. Michael Barsley: The Left-Handed
Book. Souvenir Press. 1966 -
(popular).
3. Diane Paul: Living Left-handed.
Bloomsbury. 1990 - (real life
experiences).
NNWFHS New PUBLICATION
Surname Index Of Burials 1813-1837
For The Parish Churches Of:
St Nicholas, Curdworth;
St John the Baptist, Lea Marston;
St John the Baptist, Middleton;
St Giles, Nether Whitacre;
St Leonard, Over Whitacre;
St Cuthbert, Shustoke; St Chad, Wishaw
Price £3 (Plus P&P)
See full list of publications on page 17 for more details