re: #52 Interesting Times

Hey, speaking of your area of expertise, did you see this?

Fighting may have shaped evolution of human hand

Pretty provocative comments from the researchers:

My first impression from reading the article was WTF? Not unusual since articles like this typically simplify and often take bizarre messages from the actual research papers. I quickly scanned the original paper to see no such conclusion as presented in the article. Not surprising since that would be entering into the evo-psych realm. Though the research does support the structure of the hand as evolved to be an effective club for striking as well as to be used as a structure for gripping and fine manipulation (a remarkable structure, in other words), the emotional content, i.e. inherent violence of homo sapiens, cannot be inferred. The professor quoted in the article is going well beyond his research in making such a claim.