Left-handed people were once considered to be unlucky and even evil in the past.

In the Middle Ages in Britain, lefties were associated with the devil in Christianity, and were often accused of the crime of witchcraft, for which one of the punishments was being burned at the stake!

Thankfully, left-handers don’t have to worry about that these days.

Historians have also found evidence that there were left-handed Neanderthals – an extinct species of early human – around 500,000 years ago.

Back then cave-men and women ate a diet of raw meat a lot of the time, which is pretty tough on the teeth.

Archaeologists think Neanderthals would bite the meat and use a sharp piece of stone as a tool to cut the meat near to their mouth.

Occasionally the stone would slip, and from looking at the direction of the scratches on their teeth, the researchers found that around ten percent of Neanderthals seemed to have held the stone tool with their left hand.

So lefties have been around for more than 500,000 years!

Some studies have suggested that more people are left-handed these days than in the past, but part of the reason for that could be because it is more widely accepted and embraced now, whereas previously it was seen as a bad thing so people didn’t want to admit to being left-handed.