關於左撇子的十大奇談(下)

Left-Handed Biblical Warriors

5.《聖經》中的左手武士

We've talked a bit about how someone left-handed may have an advantage in combat, and that's certainly been well-known throughout history. In fact, the Bible makes special mention of left-handed warriors, which has led to an interesting debate. Needing to free Israel from the rule of the Moabites, God sent Ehud, a left-handed assassin, to carry out one of the most gruesome Biblical assassinations. A big deal is made of left-handed Ehud sneaking his double-bladed dagger into the king's presence by hiding it on his right thigh. Ehud is far from the only left-hander that the Bible mentions. These Biblical left-handers were warriors that came from a tribe called the Benjamites.

上文中我們提到過，左撇子在戰鬥中會有許多優勢——這在歷史上廣爲人知。事實上，《聖經》中在一場著名的鬥爭中特別提及了左手武士。爲了幫助以色列人擺脫摩押人的統治，耶和華派出了他的左撇子暗殺者——以笏來實施一場最恐怖的暗殺計劃。這位左撇子武士將他的雙刃匕首藏在右腿的褲管裏去面聖。以笏也並不是《聖經》中提及的唯一的左撇子，這些《聖經》中的左手武士大多來自於本傑明部落（Benjamites）。

According to Judges, the Benjamites were incredible warriors that could hit a single human hair with a sling and used a bow with unparalleled ambidextrous skill. There is debate as to how this warrior tribe developed the left-handed fighting style. One theory states that the Benjamites were simply predisposed to being left-handed, much like the abovementioned Kerr family. Another theory focuses on the translation. The words used to describe their left-handed fighting style didn't just mean "left-handed" but also, quite literally, "restricted in his right hand." Some think that this translation hints at the tribe taking great lengths to retrain right-handed people to use a left-handed fighting style, giving them an edge in battle. It's also possible that the Bible took special note of specifically left-handed Benjamites because of the humor in their name: "Benjamin" translates as "son of my right hand," so the left-handed Benjamites were, ironically, "left-handed right-handers."

從書中來看，本傑明武士所向披靡，他們可以用彈弓打中一根頭髮絲，雙手都能夠靈活操控弓箭。但是這麼一個武士部落如何成爲了後來的左撇子武士團依舊是個廣爲爭論的話題。其中一個理論認爲本傑明部落本身就有變成左撇子的傾向，就像上文中的科爾家族一樣。而另一理論堅持"轉變說"。它認爲書中描述他們左手作戰的文字事實上表達了另一種意思——他們有意識地限制自己使用右手。有人認爲這種轉變暗示了這個武士軍團在很長的一段時間內都致力於訓練慣用右手的士兵使用左手來提高戰爭中的優勢。也有人認爲《聖經》中之所以着重描寫了左撇子本傑明是因爲他們的名字"Benjamin"寓意着"右手之子（son of my right hand）"，所以那些慣用左手的本傑明部族就令人啼笑皆非的變成了"慣用左手的右手之子"。

George VI And Retraining Of Left-Handed Children

4.喬治六世和左撇子兒童的後天訓練

The bias against left-handed children has resulted in some pretty extreme measures. A Zulu child who ate his porridge with his left hand could expect to have that hand burned in the hot porridge as a lesson. Even in 20th-century Britain children could expect to have their left hand tied down to make them use their right one. British child psychologists that supported this retraining method also preached that children who used their left hand were simply demonstrating—and developing—a defiant personality that needed to be corrected as soon as possible.

人們對左撇子兒童的偏見導致了一些極端殘酷的刑罰。如果一個祖魯小孩用左手喝了粥，那麼他的左手會被浸到滾燙的熱粥裏以示懲戒。即使在20世紀的英國，家長還是會把小孩的左手綁起來以迫使他們使用右手。英國兒童心理學家認爲這種後天訓練的方法表明了那些左撇子孩子大多擁有一種叛逆個性，需要儘早糾正。

Even kings weren't exempt from this; tutors struggled to get the young Duke of York (later George VI) to start using his right hand instead of his left, along with working on his well-known stutter. This, along with other children developing stutters after similar retraining, gave rise to the idea that the two were somehow connected. A number of medical works were presented on how retraining children to become right-handed would lead to the development of a stutter, as well as conditions like dyslexia and other reading difficulties. It was put forth that switching dominant hands led to a struggle for dominance between the two sides of the brain, which in turn manifested itself in a stutter. This theory led to a massive rethinking of the whole retraining idea, and the practice began to die out. Nowadays, it's thought that there's a different reason that children forced to change their hand of choice can develop a stutter: It has more to do with being put in a stressful situation than with the two sides of the brain arguing with each other.

即使國王也不能免於這種後天訓練。家庭教師曾經試圖讓小約翰公爵（即後來的喬治六世）使用他的右手而非左手，同時試圖矯正他的口吃。然而其他孩子在這種訓練下也產生了口吃的毛病，人們不得不開始思考兩者間的聯繫，包括誦讀困難和其他閱讀困難問題。有人提出，改變慣用手強行轉變了大腦的左右半葉的控制區塊，從而導致口吃等毛病的出現。這個理論讓人們開始反省轉變慣用手的利弊，這種後天訓練也逐漸不了了之。不過如今，人們普遍覺得後天訓練導致口吃也許有不同的原因——後天訓練讓孩子們面臨了巨大的壓力，從而左右腦難以協調。

re Lombroso's Theories On The Left-Handed

3.切薩雷·龍勃羅梭的左撇子理論

Since Lombroso was a physician who lived at the turn of the 20th century, you'd expect his opinions on the matter of left-handed people to have been a little more clinical and forgiving . . . but we'll let his words speak for him: "Man advances in civilization and culture; he shows an always greater right-sidedness as compared to . . . women and savage races; [who] even when they are not properly left-handed have certain gestures and movements which are a species of left-handedness." In case that leaves any doubt as to his position on the matter, he went on to explain it.

作爲20世紀末的一名醫生，我們也許期望龍勃羅梭對於左撇子現象做出更爲客觀的評判……但是事實並非如此。"人類文明和文化不斷的進步，他給我們展示了更美好的右邊一面……相較於婦女和那些未開化的野蠻種族；即使是那些並不算嚴格意義上的左撇子的人，也有偏向於左手派別的特定的手勢和行爲"。這番話也許讓我們對他對於左撇子的態度感到疑惑，龍勃羅梭隨即解釋了這一切。

Lombroso thought that there was a higher part of the brain that was connected to logic and reason, while the lower part of the brain was responsible for governing man's baser urges and emotions. It was this lower brain that dictated the lives of the left-handed, as well as of criminals, lunatics, and the generally wicked. He also said that while a person who's left-handed wasn't necessarily bad, left-handedness was one of the traits that he had found to be present in "the worst characters among the human species." Lombroso pointed to a long history of bias against the left-handed in support of his theory, which, at the time, was viewed as medical fact and pretty new, revolutionary science. Weirdly, his ideas haven't gone away. Scientists as recently as the 1990s have used his work as a basis for their studies that have concluded that left-handed people were more prone to genetic disorders and had shorter lifespans.

他認爲邏輯與理性佔據了大腦中極大一部分區塊，剩下的一小部分與慾望和感性相關聯，而左撇子的生活正是由這一小部分支配，包括罪犯、精神病人和一些極端分子。龍勃羅梭還稱，即使左撇子並不一定都是壞人，他們也展現了"人性中最醜陋的一面"。他認爲歷史上人們對左撇子根深蒂固的偏見恰恰證實了他的理論。這在當時看來是個頗具革命性和科學性的研究理論。然而奇怪的是他的理論並沒有隨着時間淡出人們視線。20世紀90年代的科學家們在龍勃羅梭的調查基礎上進行了更進一步的研究，發現左撇子相較於常人更易出現精神混亂，壽命也更爲短暫。

nking The Myth Of Shorter Lifespans

2.揭開短壽傳言背後的真相

Speaking of the myth that left-handed people don't live as long as right-handed ones, let's take a look at that oft-repeated statistic. According to a study published between the late 1980s and early 1990s, a survey of 2,000 people living—and dying—in Southern California led researchers to conclude that left-handed people were, on average, nine years younger when they died. Researchers then went on to speculate that the cause of death had something to do with living in a world designed for right-handed people; statistics like left-handed drivers being about five times more likely to die in a car accident seemed to support this theory. Sort of. They also looked at the number of other types of accidents left-handed people were involved in and chalked it all up to them having to deal with the daily difficulties of using things designed for right-handed people, like knives and power tools. Sounds . . . almost right?

傳言說左撇子的壽命比正常人要更爲短暫。讓我們來看看這一份被多次借鑑的統計數據：在1980年到1990年間，南加利福尼亞州曾對2000人做了一份調查，統計結果表明左撇子人羣的平均壽命比常人少了9年左右。研究員猜測在這個爲右手量身定做的世界裏生活也許和他們的死因有些許聯繫。比如說，左撇子駕駛員在交通事故中的死亡率是正常人的將近5倍。他們還統計了其他事故中左撇子的死亡率，最終將其歸咎於日常生活設施都是爲慣用右手的人設計的因而左撇子在使用上有一定難度，像道具和一些危險器具之類的。這聽起來似乎有一些道理。

Our left-handed readers will be glad to know that the theory has since been debunked as total garbage. The numbers might work and the method might have been theoretically sound . . . so where's the discrepancy? The problem is a weird one. Throughout history, left-handed people have been forced to become right-handed, and that practice has only really recently begun to change. So when researchers took a look at how many people had died, their results were skewed. To collect data for their study, they called the families of the deceased and asked them whether their loved ones had been right-handed or left-handed; given the age of the people the survey was investigating, there was undoubtedly a large number of left-handed people who had grown up in a world where being left-handed was discouraged and frowned upon. So not only would they have tried to hide their left-handed tendencies, but their families would have identified them as largely right-handed. Those who admitted to being left-handed tended to be younger, having grown up after the stigma went away. This made it seem like the young deaths of left-handed people were representative of the whole.

想必我們的左撇子讀者看到這裏會很開心，因爲這麼看來所謂的短壽傳言就是廢話。這些言論理論上看來似乎很行得通，可是問題出在哪裏呢？關鍵在於，歷史上許多左撇子都被強迫訓練使用他們的右手，直到現今這種後天的右手訓練才漸漸消失。因此，當研究員調查左撇子死亡率時，他們的結果就存在一定的偏差。爲了收集數據，研究員聯繫了那些有病史的家庭，詢問他們的近親是否是左撇子。考慮到研究對象的年齡問題，毫無疑問他們中的大多數都生活在一個排斥左撇子的時代。所以不光他們自己會否認自己是左撇子，他們的家人也會幫他們隱瞞真相。因而，那些大方承認自己是左撇子的多半是一些年輕人，他們生活在一個左撇子不再象徵着恥辱的年代。這使得這些年輕一代的死亡率無意間代表了所有左撇子羣體。

g Left-Handed Might Help You Survive The Apocalypse

1.左撇子也許能成爲世界末日倖存者

The end is nigh, society is crumbling, and civilization is falling apart. People are scrambling for whatever supplies they can find in order to make it through the night. Chances are, you've been part of (or at least overheard) a conversation about what you'd require to get you through the apocalypse. You probably have never heard someone say that they'd like to be left-handed, but perhaps that should actually be the first answer they think of. If you've seen Rocky, you know how much of an advantage left-handed fighters have, and studies have shown that the more lawless the society, the greater that advantage is.

末日將臨，社會分崩，文明瓦解。人們慌亂的企圖抓住任何可以幫他們度過這場劫難的東西。唯一的出路只有你設法參與（或至少無意間聽到）到一場討論如何在世界末日逃生的談話。你也許從沒聽到過有人說希望成爲一個左撇子，但可能這是他們第一個能想到的答案了。如果你看過《洛奇》（Rocky），你就會知道一個左撇子拳擊手是多麼的強大。並且有研究表明，當社會越無序混亂，左撇子的優勢就越明顯。

The baseline for the population's percentage of left-handed people is around 10 percent, but in some societies that number is far greater. Among Venezuela's Yanomami tribe, about 5 in every 1,000 people are murdered yearly—and about 23 percent of the population is left-handed. For the Eipo in Indonesia, the murder rate is 3 in 1,000, and they're about 27 percent left-handed. And then there are the people of Jimi Valley in Papua New Guinea, who have a murder rate of 5.4 in 1,000 and an above-average instance of left-handed people at 13 percent. The study, conducted by the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences, University Montpellier, shows a measurable difference between the most violent societies and the most peaceful ones. For instance, the Dioula from West Africa have a murder rate of 0.013 in 1,000 murder and a left-handed rate of only 3 percent. Researchers conjecture that the advantage of being left-handed in a violent society isn't just a matter of survival, it's a matter of natural selection and allowing one generation to pass its left-handed traits on to the next.

世界人口中左撇子大約佔10％左右，不過在一些社會中這個比率會高上許多。在委內瑞拉的亞諾瑪米部落中，每年平均每1000個人中就有5個人被謀殺——該部落中23％的人口是左撇子。印度尼西亞的電子統計平臺顯示，印尼犯罪率大約在3‰，其總人口中左撇子佔比大約27％。巴布亞新幾內亞的吉米峽谷中的族人犯罪率高達5.4‰，他們的左撇子佔比也高於平均水平，大約在13％。蒙彼利埃大學的進化科學研究會的一項調查研究發現，相較於這些犯罪率最高的社會結構，那些安定的社會結構顯得截然不同。例如西非的迪烏拉犯罪率僅有0.013‰，同時他們的人口中左撇子佔比僅3％。研究員們推測，在混亂的社會中，一個左撇子並不僅僅意味着可以在暴力衝突中倖存，這其實是一種自然選擇，使得一代人中慣用左手的一族得以連綿相傳。

翻譯：周予星 來源：前十網