Hence the old joke: "Emacs sure is a great operating system, pity it's missing a good text editor"
It has also inspired "Zawinski's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail" (Zawinski worked on both XEmacs and Netscape...)
But a common pattern was that the systems majorly used with Emacs as the keybindings evolved all had mirrored bucky bits which means instead of using left pinky finger for Control key when hitting C-x C-f many would use right thumb for Control and left hand for X and F.
And so there's nothing virtuously ergonomic about the vim keybindings and people who try to make it seem like there's some UX genius there (and to be fair, also with emacs) are often involved in a rather elitist game of retcon.
Emacs at least evolved on systems that had much richer keyboards, and with the deliberate intent to make use of those extra keys but also make it possible for people to just muck with it and make it whatever they wanted.
In the late 80s, early 90s when I got my start on Unix... I specifically chose emacs over vi because it let me use exotic novelties like... arrow keys.
To use the left pinky on those keyboards for left Control, you would have to leave the home row completely, and shit your wrists awkwardly....