This study is a very different approach to understanding early human (and pre-human) social behavior. It stresses the valuable role that dancing and singing would have played in enhancing group solidarity and communication in hominid bands during the Pleistocene. These researchers feel it was so important that it left genetic markers.
A sample of contemporary creative dancers (according to this study) share two specific genes that are associated with a predisposition for being good social communicators. The researchers believe that this dancing behavior may go back 1.5 million years, which would put it back in the Homo erectus era.
Anyone who has seen me dance knows that I was behind the door when those genes got handed out.
1 comment:
I took 5 kids, age 9 to 18, to a concert this past week. As one of the oldest people in the venue (35!) I couldn't help but observe. All I could think was TRIBAL, all that dancing and singing, and I'm no anthropologist but what a strange little ceremony a rock concert is!
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