The fighting hypothesis is a major hypothesis on the evolution of left-handedness.

A new publication presents the modified fighting hypothesis.

The modified fighting hypothesis assumes that right-handers have an evolutionary advantage.

The fighting hypothesis is one of the major theories on the evolution of left-handedness.

Around the world, about 10.6% of people are left-handers, and the rest are right-handers. Many scientists have developed ideas and theories on the evolution of right- and left-handedness that are aimed at explaining this peculiar pattern. One of the leading ideas is the so-called fighting hypothesis.

The fighting hypothesis (Raymond and co-workers, 1996) proposes that there is a so-called frequency-dependent maintenance of left-handedness. The main idea is that over the tens of thousands of years of human evolution, left-handers did have an advantage in fights due to a surprise effect. This gives them an evolutionary survival benefit since they win more fights. This surprise effect emerges since most people would expect their opponent in a fight to be right-handed and attack mainly with the right hand, so they may be taken by surprise if the fight is with a left-handed person.........

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