5.The Left-Handed Biblical Warriors
5.《圣经》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.
上文中我们提到过，左撇子在战斗中会有许多优势——这在历史上广为人知。事实上，《圣经》中在一场著名的斗争中特别提及了左手武士。为了帮助以色列人摆脱摩押人的统治，耶和华派出了他的左撇子暗杀者——以笏来实施一场最恐怖的暗杀计划。这位左撇子武士将他的双刃匕首藏在右腿的裤管里去面圣。以笏也并不是《圣经》中提及的唯一的左撇子，这些《圣经》中的左手武士大多来自于本杰明部落（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."
从书中来看，本杰明武士所向披靡，他们可以用弹弓打中一根头发丝，双手都能够灵活操控弓箭。但是这么一个武士部落如何成为了后来的左撇子武士团依旧是个广为争论的话题。其中一个理论认为本杰明部落本身就有变成左撇子的倾向，就像上文中的科尔家族一样。而另一理论坚持"转变说"。它认为书中描述他们左手作战的文字事实上表达了另一种意思——他们有意识地限制自己使用右手。有人认为这种转变暗示了这个武士军团在很长的一段时间内都致力于训练惯用右手的士兵使用左手来提高战争中的优势。也有人认为《圣经》中之所以着重描写了左撇子本杰明是因为他们的名字"Benjamin"寓意着"右手之子（son of my right hand）"，所以那些惯用左手的本杰明部族就令人啼笑皆非的变成了"惯用左手的右手之子"。

4.King George VI And Retraining Of Left-Handed Children
4.乔治六世和左撇子儿童的后天训练

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.
人们对左撇子儿童的偏见导致了一些极端残酷的刑罚。如果一个祖鲁小孩用左手喝了粥，那么他的左手会被浸到滚烫的热粥里以示惩戒。即使在20世纪的英国，家长还是会把小孩的左手绑起来以迫使他们使用右手。英国儿童心理学家认为这种后天训练的方法表明了那些左撇子孩子大多拥有一种叛逆个性，需要尽早纠正。
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.
即使国王也不能免于这种后天训练。家庭教师曾经试图让小约翰公爵（即后来的乔治六世）使用他的右手而非左手，同时试图矫正他的口吃。然而其他孩子在这种训练下也产生了口吃的毛病，人们不得不开始思考两者间的联系，包括诵读困难和其他阅读困难问题。有人提出，改变惯用手强行转变了大脑的左右半叶的控制区块，从而导致口吃等毛病的出现。这个理论让人们开始反省转变惯用手的利弊，这种后天训练也逐渐不了了之。不过如今，人们普遍觉得后天训练导致口吃也许有不同的原因——后天训练让孩子们面临了巨大的压力，从而左右脑难以协调。

3.Cesare Lombroso's Theories On The Left-Handed
3.切萨雷·龙勃罗梭的左撇子理论

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.
作为20世纪末的一名医生，我们也许期望龙勃罗梭对于左撇子现象做出更为客观的评判……但是事实并非如此。"人类文明和文化不断的进步，他给我们展示了更美好的右边一面……相较于妇女和那些未开化的野蛮种族；即使是那些并不算严格意义上的左撇子的人，也有偏向于左手派别的特定的手势和行为"。这番话也许让我们对他对于左撇子的态度感到疑惑，龙勃罗梭随即解释了这一切。
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.
他认为逻辑与理性占据了大脑中极大一部分区块，剩下的一小部分与欲望和感性相关联，而左撇子的生活正是由这一小部分支配，包括罪犯、精神病人和一些极端分子。龙勃罗梭还称，即使左撇子并不一定都是坏人，他们也展现了"人性中最丑陋的一面"。他认为历史上人们对左撇子根深蒂固的偏见恰恰证实了他的理论。这在当时看来是个颇具革命性和科学性的研究理论。然而奇怪的是他的理论并没有随着时间淡出人们视线。20世纪90年代的科学家们在龙勃罗梭的调查基础上进行了更进一步的研究，发现左撇子相较于常人更易出现精神混乱，寿命也更为短暂。

2.Debunking The Myth Of Shorter Lifespans
2.揭开短寿传言背后的真相

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?
传言说左撇子的寿命比正常人要更为短暂。让我们来看看这一份被多次借鉴的统计数据：在1980年到1990年间，南加利福尼亚州曾对2000人做了一份调查，统计结果表明左撇子人群的平均寿命比常人少了9年左右。研究员猜测在这个为右手量身定做的世界里生活也许和他们的死因有些许联系。比如说，左撇子驾驶员在交通事故中的死亡率是正常人的将近5倍。他们还统计了其他事故中左撇子的死亡率，最终将其归咎于日常生活设施都是为惯用右手的人设计的因而左撇子在使用上有一定难度，像道具和一些危险器具之类的。这听起来似乎有一些道理。
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.
想必我们的左撇子读者看到这里会很开心，因为这么看来所谓的短寿传言就是废话。这些言论理论上看来似乎很行得通，可是问题出在哪里呢？关键在于，历史上许多左撇子都被强迫训练使用他们的右手，直到现今这种后天的右手训练才渐渐消失。因此，当研究员调查左撇子死亡率时，他们的结果就存在一定的偏差。为了收集数据，研究员联系了那些有病史的家庭，询问他们的近亲是否是左撇子。考虑到研究对象的年龄问题，毫无疑问他们中的大多数都生活在一个排斥左撇子的时代。所以不光他们自己会否认自己是左撇子，他们的家人也会帮他们隐瞒真相。因而，那些大方承认自己是左撇子的多半是一些年轻人，他们生活在一个左撇子不再象征着耻辱的年代。这使得这些年轻一代的死亡率无意间代表了所有左撇子群体。

1.Being Left-Handed Might Help You Survive The Apocalypse
1.左撇子也许能成为世界末日幸存者

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.
末日将临，社会分崩，文明瓦解。人们慌乱的企图抓住任何可以帮他们度过这场劫难的东西。唯一的出路只有你设法参与（或至少无意间听到）到一场讨论如何在世界末日逃生的谈话。你也许从没听到过有人说希望成为一个左撇子，但可能这是他们第一个能想到的答案了。如果你看过《洛奇》（Rocky），你就会知道一个左撇子拳击手是多么的强大。并且有研究表明，当社会越无序混乱，左撇子的优势就越明显。
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约占10％左右，不过在一些社会中这个比率会高上许多。在委内瑞拉的亚诺玛米部落中，每年平均每1000个人中就有5个人被谋杀——该部落中23％的人口是左撇子。印度尼西亚的电子统计平台显示，印尼犯罪率大约在3‰，其总人口中左撇子占比大约27％。巴布亚新几内亚的吉米峡谷中的族人犯罪率高达5.4‰，他们的左撇子占比也高于平均水平，大约在13％。蒙彼利埃大学的进化科学研究会的一项调查研究发现，相较于这些犯罪率最高的社会结构，那些安定的社会结构显得截然不同。例如西非的迪乌拉犯罪率仅有0.013‰，同时他们的人口中左撇子占比仅3％。研究员们推测，在混乱的社会中，一个左撇子并不仅仅意味着可以在暴力冲突中幸存，这其实是一种自然选择，使得一代人中惯用左手的一族得以连绵相传。

翻译：周予星 来源：前十网