The BBC recently carried an article on the stencilled outline of a hand found on the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi (January 21, 2026). The painting has been dated to at least 67, 800 years ago much older than the previous record of a hand stencil in Spain.
For many anthropologists, cave art is seen as a key marker of when humans began to think in abstract and symbolic ways underpinning the basis for language and science.
However, the representation of the hand highlights a materialist consideration set out in an unfinished paper written by Frederick Engels. This was The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man”. The work is an unfinished essay written by Engels in the spring of 1876 and first published in 1896. The essay forms the ninth chapter of “Dialectics of Nature”, which proposes a unitary materialist paradigm of natural and human history.
In his essay “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” , Friedrich Engels presents a materialist explanation of human evolution. Central to his argument is the hand, which Engels sees not merely as a biological organ but as a historical product of labour and a driving force in the development of humanity. For Engels, the hand is both shaped by work and a shaper of human consciousness, society, and culture.
Engels begins by rejecting explanations of human evolution that prioritize the brain alone. Instead, he argues that upright posture freed the hands from locomotion, allowing them to be used for labour. This shift marked a decisive break from other animals. Once the hands were liberated, they could engage in increasingly complex tasks such as grasping, shaping tools, and manipulating the environment. Over time, repeated labour refined the hand itself, making it more dexterous and capable. Thus, Engels famously describes the hand as “not only the organ of labour, but also the product of labour.”
Labour, in Engels’s view, is a collective and social activity. As early humans worked together—hunting, gathering, and making tools—the hand became essential to cooperation. Tool-making required precision and planning, and this practical activity stimulated the development of the brain. Engels stresses that consciousness did not emerge in isolation but through material interaction with the world. The hand, by enabling purposeful transformation of nature, played a foundational role in this process.
The development of the hand also contributed to the emergence of language. Engels argues that cooperative labour created a need for communication, leading to the gradual formation of speech. Hand-based work and spoken language evolved together, reinforcing one another. As humans communicated more effectively, their social bonds strengthened, further accelerating intellectual and cultural development. In this sense, the hand is deeply connected not only to physical survival but also to social organization.
Engels’s analysis challenges idealist philosophies that view ideas or intellect as the primary drivers of history. Instead, he places material activity—especially labour—at the centre of human development. The hand symbolizes this materialist approach. It is through practical activity, mediated by the hand, that humans transform nature and, in doing so, transform themselves. Art, science, and technology all trace their origins back to manual labour.
The implications of Engels’s argument extend beyond evolutionary theory. By emphasizing labour and the hand, Engels lays the groundwork for Marxist views on history and society. Human beings are defined not just by thought, but by productive activity. Alienation under capitalism, for example, can be understood as a distortion of this fundamental relationship between the hand, labour, and human creativity.
In conclusion, Engels’s discussion of the hand highlights its central role in the transition from ape to human. The hand is both a biological adaptation and a social-historical force. Through labour, the hand shaped the human body, mind, and society itself. Engels’s insight remains influential because it connects human evolution to material conditions and collective activity, offering a powerful alternative to purely biological or idealist explanations of what it means to be human.
