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Yet another thing that made us human: Dancing

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Chimps eating shellfish helps explain human evolution? Hey, here’s another one, from a philosopher, dancer, and scholar of religion:

What if humans are the primates whose capacity to dance (shared by some birds and mammals) was the signature strategy enabling the evolution of a distinctively large and interconnected brain, empathic heart and ecological adaptability? And what if dancing plays this role for humans not just in prehistoric times, but continuing into the present? What if humans are creatures who evolved to dance as the enabling condition of their own bodily becoming? Kimerer LaMothe, “ The dancing species: how moving together in time helps make us human” at Aeon

Birds generally dance in courtship. Only humans dance in order to express personal ideas. Lamothe’s observations are on target but we are left with the question: “Who told you you had ideas?”

Strange, how much scholarship needs to deny the obvious difference between humans and animals.

Some other human evolution claims: Eating fat, not meat, led to bigger human type brains, say researchers.

Earlier discussion of the fat theory.

Starchy food may have aided human brain development

Do big brains matter to human intelligence?

Human evolution: The war of trivial explanations

and

What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness

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Comments
The Bee Gees would be happy...
Bee Gees - You Should Be Dancing 1976 (HQ Audio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI68A-rntIk
bornagain77
June 8, 2019
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I never feel more human than when I am doing the jitterbug. Too bad dancing today has lost it's primary cultural component: people getting along. Today, we dance apart, shaking our groove things physically separated. Fifty plus years ago, people danced in pairs, where they had to get along, at least for a few minutes at a time. Compromise, one person leading and one following. Getting along in some sort of ordered fashion. Just for a few minutes. Making things work together. Today, we're separating further and further, culturally speaking, maritally speaking, morally speaking. Funny how dancing fell apart at the same time our culture began falling apart... (*Yes, I know people still take ballroom etc. dance classes, but it's not the primary mode of social dancing today.)EDTA
June 8, 2019
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Dancin’ DANCIN’ DANCINNNNN’!!!!! While eating seafood to a super nova, covered in fat, with a head cold! BOOM! HUMANs!AaronS1978
June 8, 2019
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I'm gonna guess that rhythmic clapping and foot stompin' came first. Then Thog started in with "boom, she-bop, boom-boom-boom, she-bop", and got the little kids jumpin' all over the place. And then Thogetta takes Thog's hand and says the magic words, "Wanna DANCE, big boy?" And from then on we had "dinner and dancing" as evening entertainment.vmahuna
June 8, 2019
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