Wednesday 9 February 2011

The thumb is the Hero...

As part of my reading around drawing I have wandered off a bit and looked up some stuff on the evolution of the precision grip of the human hand.  The wikipedia entry on THUMB is pretty good and refers to a 1981 book review in the New York Times of John Napiers book Hands (Review HERE).  


John Napier was quite a character; he worked with Louis Leakey in Olduvai gorge discovering an early Homind Homo habilis in 1960, he refuted the evidence of Big Foot and he also specialised in hands. Here is a nice paper on the difference between the precision and power grip of the human hand (Napier, John Russell (November 1956). "The prehensile movements of the human hand"J Bone Joint Surg Br 38 (4): 902–913.PMID 13376678.)