The common keyboard used around emacs era in the 1980s are those keyboards from Lisp Machines. The keyboard on lisp machines have the Control key besides the space bar (similar to the position of Alt keys on PC keyboards), and Meta to the left of Control. So, the Control key is the primary modifier, and the Meta is secondary to Control. This is why, the shortcuts for the most used commands in emacs involve the Control key instead of the Meta key.
[^] # Re: Et t'as pas tout vu
Posté par Frank-N-Furter . En réponse au journal Aptitude (Debian) : la grande désillusion. Évalué à 3.
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html
Depending on the time of day, the French go either way.