The anthropology and social significance of the human hand.

A DEFINITIVE study of the anthropology of the human hand has yet to be written. Certain investigators, notably Krogman {17), Schultz (28,29), Ashley-Montagu (2), Clark (5), and Huxley (13), have done intensive work on specific aspects of the morphology of the human hand. Nevertheless, the paucity of published studies, the fragmentary nature of the research, and the failure to attempt any but the most general conclusions make it difficult to summarize in a short article the present status of the hand in human evolution. Authorities differ both in opinion and in practice as to the value of anthropometric measurements in tracing the lines along which specialization has moved in the evolution of the hand. Published materials on the social significance of the hand are, however, numerous, and the importance of the hand as an organ both of performance and of perception has been recognized in all fields of the social sciences. Man alone has a hand. He uses it as a tool, as a symbol, and as a weapon. A whole literature of legend, folklore, superstition, and myth has been built up around the human hand. As an organ of performance it serves as eyes for the blind, the mute talk with it, and it has become a symbol of salutation, supplication, and condemnation. The hand has played a part in the creative life of every known society, and it has come to be symbolic or representative of the whole person in art, in drama, and in the dance. Students of constitutional types have used the hand as a means of classification, and the correlation between mental ability and manual dexterity has been the subject of much research. At the University of