What’s the socio-cultural significance of clapping? Like who decided people should bash tf out of their palms to someone or something that wins, impresses, makes an appearance?
The idea of it ‘activating’ the ‘accupressure points in fingers’ seems plausible but surely some bloke up and said whoaaa this stuff makes my chakras go brrrrr…
So… what’s with that?
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>Like who decided people should bash tf out of their palms to someone or something that wins, impresses, makes an appearance?
That’s something we don’t know, in general nobody knows exactly how or when certain non-verbal communication signs started and how they happened to mean the same or similar in different human cultures. Take screaming (or making a similar sound) for example, when scared all humans do that and we assume it’s about signaling danger; it’s about social evolution of our species, early humans lived in groups and when facing a danger it was beneficial to them to make a loud enough sound as fast as possible to warn the nearby members of their group there’s a dangerous animal or something. Very similarly, we’re using another loud noise -clapping our hands- to signify we approve of something, congratulate something or in some cases a clap of irony (“oh wow really, superb man, just great *claps hands ironically*”). Looks like louder noises have an evolutionary advantage, which resulted in humans using them almost without thinking about it, happens all so fast and naturally. So we came to understand that if it’s a loud sound it’s meant for a community/social event, it’s meant to be heard. If it’s loud it’s about something that needs to be shared, like danger or a very happy moment of celebration
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