A few weeks ago, I found myself absentmindedly working in the perennial garden. I had wandered nearby and noted some weeds that needed emergency extirpation. I had therefore arrived without my usual trine of implements -- the dandelion puller, the hand shovel, and the Felco #2. Too lazy to fetch them, I began to tend to the plants toollessly and at the same time to muse upon effectiveness of hands alone. (Weeding often leads to musing, as every weeder knows.) Is it not the case that the best tool of all is the human hand? Because my garden soil is so friable, I was able to dig into the earth with my unaided index finger, grasp the roots of weeds and pull them. I wondered how the hand had come to so sensitive to small changes in soil temperature or soil moisture. Sensitive also, to the texture of things, so that I could identify the roots of witch grass, and remove them, while leaving untouched the very similar but different roots of the day lilies. For no good reason, my wayward mind wandered to the Houyhnhnms whom Gulliver outrageously claimed could grasp a needle between fetlock and pastern in order to sew garments. Amusing but impossible. The hooves of horses are wonderfully evolved for galloping but not for tatting or crocheting. Besides, why would a horse want to darn a sock?
Our hands are superior implements There's not another animal on the planet that can tie its own shoelaces.
I've just read a fascinating book by paleontologist Madelaine Bohme called Ancient Bones. Bohme is concerned to argue that the "out of Africa" hypothesis needs modification. I am not knowledgeable enough to accept or deny her thesis, but I much appreciate her effort to bring me up to date about the evolution of our species, which is much more complicated -- infinitely more complicated -- than the story we were told just a generation ago.
Bohme includes a couple of speculative pages about the evolution of the hand. First came bipedalism, freeing the hands for a variety of new tasks. Bohme thinks that the development of stone tools and the development of hands went, so to speak, hand in hand. The need to hold the tool meant that the hand evolved to hold it properly -- with an opposable thumb of course. More sensitive fingers conferred an evolutionary advantage. More information from the fingers caused the somatosensory cortex, which controls the hands, to enlarge and process more sensations.
So now we can play the piano, thread a needle, throw a ball, type a letter, weed a garden, and perform a thousand other tasks that even chimpanzees, who apparently do not have great sensory input from their fingers, cannot do.
Bohme does not discuss the role of hands in human communication, either everyday or erotic. A topic for another book, perhaps.