Hands

197 Pages·2021·27.384 MB·English

by  John Russell Napier, Russell H. Tuttle

Hands

John Napier
Hands
Revised by RUSSELL H. TUTTLE
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Foreword
PROFESSOR John Russell Napier (1917-1987) is preeminent
among the founders of modern primatology. He is renowned
for his descriptions and interpretations of the hand of a new
species, Homo habilis (Leakey, Tobias, and Napier, 1964), and
for his creative functional, ecological, behavioral, anmd evolu-
tionary overviews of the order Primates, which stimulated many
of his contemporaries and younger students to develop further
and challenge his ideas and keen observations. Hands is Dr.
Napier's last major single-authored work, written at the pinnacle
of a distinguished research career. Here he shares his vast knowl-
edge of human and nonhuman anatomy, evolutionary history,
and broader anthropological and artistic perspectives on our
hands in a highly accessible and entertaining manner.
After perusing the contents of this volume, few, if any, readers
will view their hands in the same way or continue to take them
for granted. Indeed, don't be surprised if you join the swelling
ranks of hand-watchers soon after starting this adventure.
Over the past decade, Hands was the only book I could rec-
ommend to nonspecialists who wished to know more about the
human hand. It is truly an honor to revise this popular classic for
a second cohort of general and professional readers.
Above all, I have endeavored to conserve Dr. Napier's voice,
style, and wit. He was an exuberant, highly entertaining speaker
and raconteur, whose enthusiasm for a topic quickly rippled
through an audience. His experiences in medical education,
both as student and teacher, and his affable society with persons
from many arts and scientific professions supplied him with a
rich variety of humorous anecdotes, some of which are to be
found in the pages that follow.
In the years since Hands was first published, paleoanthro-
pological discoveries and behavioral ecological studies of non-
human primates have increased dramatically (Lewin, 1989;
Tuttle, 1986). In order to preserve Dr. Napier's voice, I did not
Contents
List of Illustrations and Figures vii
Foreword by Russell H. Tuttle ix
Acknowledgments xi
PART ONE Nature and Evolution
of the Hand
CHAPTER ONE
"You Need Hands . . ." 3
CHAPTER TWO
Structure of the Hand 13
CHAPTER THREE
Function of the Hand 55
CHAPTER FOUR
Evolution of the Hand 73
PART TWO Social and Cultural Aspects
of the Hand
CHAPTER FIVE
Tool-Using and Tool-Making 97
CHAPTER SIX
Handedness 121
CHAPTER SEVEN
Fingerprints 131
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gestures 143
Suggested Reading and References 159
Index 169

List of Illustrations and Figures
1 The hand of David by Michelangelo
2 Velasquez's court dwarf
3 Bones of the hand seen in relation to the soft tissues
4 The false thumb of the giant panda
5 Polydactyly in a human
6 Syndactyly in a human
7 The knuckle-walking posture used by chimpanzees, bonobos,
and gorillas
8 The names of the digits
9 Shape index of human hands
10 The double-locking action
11 Double-locking power grip
12 Palm of hand showing flexure lines and papillary ridges
13 Hand print showing main flexure lines of palm
14 The simian crease
15 Tip of ringer showing papillary ridges
16 Male and female body hairs
17 Two-handed feeding in various mammals
18 Palmar surface of the hand of an Old World monkey
19 A hypothetical synovial type of joint found in humans and all
other mammals
20 Palmar view of a dissection of the hand
21 Dorsal view of a dissected hand
22 Ulnar drift, resulting from imbalance of intrinsic hand muscles
following inflammation
23 Metacarpals 2-5 seen end on
24 "Perfect" opposition between thumb and index
25 Opposition in practice
26 Chimpanzee grasping a grape in thumb-index opposition
27 Human and chimpanzee hands in a position of rest
28 Power and precision grips
29 Unscrewing a screw-top jar (power, then precision)
30 Inserting a light bulb (precision, then power)
31 A galago about to pounce on a mealworm
32 Theoretical stages in the design and development of a sander,
for which a power grip is required
viii • List of Illustrations
33 Orangutan and human infants
34 Geological epochs during the Tertiary Period
35 A marmoset hand
36 Relationship between branch size and body size
37 Feeding kinespheres of a macaque monkey and of a gibbon
38 The hand of Proconsul africanus
39 The hand bones of Homo habilis found at Olduvai Gorge,
Tanzania, 1960
40 Fossil hands from Afar, Ethiopia
41 Fossil hand of a Neanderthal from La Ferrassie, France
42 Capuchin using three different methods to crack open
strong fibrous husks of the Cumare fruit
43 Gombe chimpanzee "fishing" for termites
44 A correlative scheme bringing together lithic and geological
subdivisions of the Pleistocene
45 The pebble-chopper—forerunner of the hand-axe
46 (a) Aurignacian burin held in a precision grip
(b) Pebble-chopper held in a power grip
47 Author attempting to construct a hand-axe in flint by stone-on-
stone method, using power grip
48 Hand-axes showing refinement and improved technique
49 Police record of a set of fingerprints of identical twins
50 The four main fingerprint types
51 Variations in papillary ridge systems
52 Characteristics of papillary ridges
53 General Sir Brian Horrocks
54 Hunting gestures used by bushmen to transmit information
regarding the nature of the game
55 Classical gestures used in acting and rhetoric in Elizabethan
England
56 Expressive gestures of a Balinese dancer
57 Washoe making ASL sign for "toothbrush"
58 Sketch of hands by Leonardo da Vinci