Since probably before humans were even human, there has been music. Rhythm, at least. And where there is rhythm, there is dance. There are preserved footprints in painted caves in France that indicate young boys dancing 20-30,000 years ago. Some ritual dances are still performed today after untold continuous centuries. Ritual isn’t just something that happens in our heads. When effective, it is an immersive experience, involving our entire beings. We are not, after all, just brains carried by flesh robots…our nervous systems extend throughout our bodies and participate heavily in our brain states. Effective rituals involve some kind of engagement of the body: singing, for example, or clapping, dancing, walking, or other movement…

As I’ve mentioned before, the most powerfully evocative of the human senses is the sense of smell. The olfactory centers are in the most primitive parts of the brain, and they can summon vivid memories in an instant, simply from a remembered scent. For thousands of years, people have burned incense and aromatic herbs such as sage, yerba santa and sweet grass to alter the mood and atmosphere around them. They have daubed themselves with perfumes and oils, brought bouquets of aromatic flowers into their homes and temples, and scattered flowers over their dead. Indeed, we have evidence of flowers in burials of Neanderthals from 60,000 years ago; whether this was because they…

The first musical instrument was almost certainly something resonant being struck: a hollow log, a dried gourd. In fact, percussive rhythm may predate humans as a species: monkeys have been observed beating on hollow logs in a call-and-response with other monkeys. Certainly the noises made while pounding seeds and roots into meal would naturally have become a source of play, even for pre-humans. Despite this near-certainty, we don’t have any fossil evidence of Paleolithic drums. Only flutes, because they were made of bone and could survive. Still, in every culture of the world, we find percussive instruments, and with them, percussive play—often in a context of religious ceremony. Drumming and…