If creating and consuming works of the imagination were a recent addition to human behavior, or if these activities were only rarely practiced across human history, it is unlikely that they would reveal universal qualities of our evolved human nature. After all, some things—like bell-bottoms and fried bananas—arise from contingent peculiarities, and so teasing out the details of their historical lineage offers only limited enlightenment. But the fact is, far into the past and clear across lands inhabited, we have been singing and dancing and composing and painting and sculpting and carving and
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