I’m loving this article from Newsweek (read the whole thing HERE):
A Darwinian understanding of culture begins with the observation that the arts appear in every human society and yield intense delight. When evolutionary psychologists detect those qualities, bells start ringing. Universal appearance of a behavior sometimes leads scientists to infer that it evolved before our ancestors’ diaspora from Africa 60,000 years ago (e.g., walking upright). And intense pleasure is often how our genes encourage some advantageous behavior (e.g., a taste for sweet or fatty food helped our ancestors get enough calories). But where an upright gait and a varied diet had obvious survival advantages for our nomad forebears, it’s far from clear that the same went for something as energy-consuming and apparently useless as the arts.