On Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:29:57 -0400, Kenneth Scharf
wrote:

I've always wondered why some languages were written from right to left.
Could it be that in some cultures left handed people were more common
than right handed?

Actually, I think the answer lies in the fact that some early writing
was done not on paper like material with charcoal or ink, but with stone
tablets and chisels. Since a right handed person would hold the chisel
with his left hand to strike it with a hammer held in his right, the
characters would be written from right to left. So ancient languages
like Hebrew would have been written from right to left, and still are
even though nothing is carved in stone anymore.

Some old scripts used bidirectional writing, with one line going from
left to right and the next right to left
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

Some schematics appears to be drawn in this way too.

Paul