Do humans dance just for fun, or did it help our ancestors survive thousands of years ago?

By Thea Singer on July 1, 2017 on Scientific American

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Excerpt: Why should dancing be such a common human trait, and why are we so good at it? In recent years scientists have begun to identify features of the brain and body that underpin our exceptional ability. Some of these features are linked to language and upright locomotion, two traits that have contributed significantly to the success of the human lineage. Perhaps, then, dance is a happy evolutionary accident, a by-product of natural selection for those other traits that helped our ancestors thrive. Insights from psychology and archaeology hint at another intriguing possibility, however: that dancing itself evolved as an adaptive trait, one that may have strengthened human social bonds in ways that enhanced survival.