Right-Handed Chimps Provide Clues To The Origin Of Human Language

More good news for those scientists who support the idea that human language evolved from the use of intentional gestures. Bill Hopkins, and French colleagues, have been recording communicative gestures in chimps for years and have found a highly significant bias to use of the right hand in communicative gestures used in contexts like attention getting, shared excitation, threat, aggression, greeting, reconciliation, and overtures to play. This, of course, implies left lateralization of the brain for these gestures. As the scientists conclude: "This finding provides additional support to the idea that speech evolved initially from a gestural communication system in our ancestors. Moreover, gestural communication in apes shares some key features with human language, such as intentionality, referential properties and flexibility of learning and use."