Birds dance. Human females like to dance. Human females, particularly young or sexually attractive ones, are often referred to as 'birds' or 'chicks', a decidedly avian term. Given the highly colourful costumes they are inclined to wear, the appellation seems accurate. Furthermore, most men will confirm how one will soon 'take flight' if she is approached with the wrong suggestions or in the wrong manner.

As all life apparently originated in the sea as micro-organisms, birds and primates must share a common ancestor. Since they share dance as a common behaviour, it's reasonable to suggest that either an early form of dance may have been common to the intermediate species, or the behavioral tendency out of which dance originated in both birds and humans was shared.

It's hard to imagine the very long-tailed fossil creature recently discovered in Germany wearing a cute little rock 'n' roll skirt, but we can certainly imagine her engaging in a sort of mating ritual similar to a dance during her courtship with a male.

Dance appears to be a primitive behavior. Modern humans have extended it the same way that they have extended most other things.

Of course, animals don't have music. Or do they? Perhaps their heart-beat, thumping loudly inside them during the excitement of courtship, inspires their movements. Perhaps instead they can detect a certain rhythm in the universe that we humans cannot consciously access and are therefore ignorant about. Perhaps we can detect it subconsciously and it is out of that rhythm that our own music springs.

We can't know the answer at this point in our development. But what we can do is theorise that if humans continue to survive, they will ultimately evolve and dance will evolve with them into something so weird and wonderful we can't even begin to imagine what it will look like.

But then again, some of the things I see take place on the dance floor today might be giving me a glimpse into the future....