Distant Origins
Where does the Dactyl Manuform come from? What is its history?
The commonly held understanding is that this extraordinary keyboard design is a simple evolution of the Kinesis Advantage boards from the early 2000s. After all, the venerable Advantage was the cutting edge of ergonomic keyboards at the time, and the scooped out shape and key layout is clearly on the evolutionary path to the Dactyl Manuform designs we proudly print and sell here at Wylderbuilds.
The original ErgoDox and Dactyls from circa 2012 were, indeed, direct descendants of the Advantage. But, oh, the Manuform — with its intriguing curves and rounded thumb clusters — was a remarkable leap forward in ergonomics and just plain geeky-cool.
Later, in 2015, the renowned GitHub user abstracthat open-sourced his Dactyl Manuform generator, a brilliant piece of code written in Clojure, and — with the parallel rise of the capabilities and affordability of 3D-printers — the Dactyl Manuform finally and fully took wing!
So, clearly, it’s a product of modern 21st Century engineering, technology, and ergonomic theory, all baked within the evolutionary heat of the open source kiln.
Right?
NOPE! I THINK NOT!
Amazingly, the origin of the Dactyl Manuform goes a little farther back…
Can you see it?
By 60,000 years!
The picture to the left is one of the 71 hand stencils found in the Cave of Maltravieso in Spain.
According to archaeologists, this is merely paleolithic art depicting the artist’s own hands using powdered ochre blown around the hand, resulting in a simple stencil outline. Such hand stencils are found from the paleolithic and Neolithic ages all around the world.
But look closer! The outline of the artist’s hands is supposed to be the only important bit, but the form the ochre takes upon the cave wall is the real item of interest, not just the hand.
Admittedly, any original representation of keycaps or TRRS cables or even carved-bone rotary encoders have all, understandably, been obscured by time and the elements, but…
That’s a Dactyl F***ing Manuform!
Neanderthals were geeks, too!
Hot Question: Could their geekiness have been a contributing factor to their sudden and mysterious extinction?
Who Cares?
We’re Talking Prehistoric Ergonomic Keyboards!! Wow! Wow! Wow!
We don’t know and, at this point, we can’t even guess what sort of technologies the Neanderthals made use of to craft their Dactyl Manuforms. Nor can we even glean what they used them for! Did they have some sort of symbolic alphabet anything like our own? What were the controllers used, if any? Might they have been biological in nature? Like, perhaps, a collection of small rodents or birds or insects? Or is that too Flintstones?
We DO know their brains were larger than ours. So, for us to think, with our smaller brains, that they didn’t have some sort of technology unimaginable to our smaller brains, only proves our brains really ARE small.
Before digital nomads, there were the digital hunter gatherers.
Is This Real?
Most of these earth-shattering theories are still outside the generally accepted “orthodox” approach to anthropology and archaeology. They are hotly contested and some of the arguments against them do hold some water.
Such as:
“They didn’t have electricity, you profoundly moronic twit.”
To which our response is: “Ok, Sapiens.”
But even some prominent ergonomic keyboard enthusiasts have expressed doubt and this saddens us.
We have faith that, in the end, as we gather more and more archaeological data, the evidence will inevitably tip in our direction.
In the meantime, why not buy a Dactyl Manuform and experience what it’s REALLY like to have a bigger brain?