An Ethological View of Ritual and Art in Human Evolutionary History

Abstract

Awareness that in pre-industrial societies art and ritual are intimately associated leads the author to consider a number of provocative similarities among ritualized behaviour in humans and other animals, human ritual ceremonial behaviour, and art. In these, emotionally-motivated behaviour, for example, is formalized and social bonds are strengthened and expressed. The author suggests that in human evolutionary history, ritual and art were originally interdependent. Sensuous aesthetic elements derived from functional behavioural, perceptual and physiological contexts (for example, rhythm, balance, ordering and shaping in time, improvising and metaphorical rendering) when combined with ritual ceremonial behaviour would have assisted the memorization and recitation of myth, group history and ceremonial sequences while simultaneously giving physical and psychological pleasure. From such elements (originally in the service of socially facilitative ritual behaviour) more specific and independent aesthetic features could be developed and refined, for their own sake, leading to autonomous artistic activity.