And that they customized their tools hundreds of thousands of years ago:
Uomini’s work showed that the way in which a knapper struck the tool with a hammerstone to remove flakes was a good indicator of whether the tool was meant to be used by a right- or left-hander: The toolmaker removed flakes in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, depending on the handedness of the person for whom the tool was intended. The tools were also blunted on one side to make them more comfortable to hold by either a right or left hand—much as right- and left-handed scissors have different handle shapes.
Archaeologist Olaf Jöris, a colleague of Uomini’s, applied this research to an assemblage of Neanderthal stone tools from Germany and found that at least 85 percent of those tools were made for right-handers, while some appear to have been modified specifically for left-handers. That work hasn’t been published yet.
Anna Goldfield, “The Neanderthal Arm—Hints About Handedness” at Sapiens
These are not the Neanderthals of the late twentieth century. Those were incredibly stupid brutes. Funny how much Neanderthals have learned in only a couple of decades…
See also: Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents
A deep and abiding need for Neanderthals to be stupid. Why?
and
Was Neanderthal man fully human? The role racism played in assessing the evidence
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