Quora Question: Who was the first person to show people how to dance?

I don't know what they're teaching in school these days.  You'd think a solid foundation of the history of social dancing would have been covered in Antediluvian History 101, but recent evidence suggests otherwise.  Someone who's mind is clearly troubled posted this question to the learned contributors of Quora (think in terms of Wikipedia rejects, neurotic amateurs, and consummate charlatans) seeking a bit of trivia.



So here we go with the latest question: Who was the first person to show people how to dance?

I addressed this topic in the not too distant past, which you can read about in Quora Question: How did dancing start?.  The organizers at Quora have since combined my response with How was dance developed?, for reason best know to themselves.

Here's how dance instruction first began:

The art of dance instruction started six million years ago (give or take a hundred thou), or to be more precise, three weeks after Og’s wife Bog (encouraged by their neighbor Steg) invented dancing, the strip tease, and the jealous husband all at the same time.

Three weeks after Bog’s début as the hottest thing since fire would be invented, Steg's wife Bem wanted a few extra clams of her own.  Bem persuaded Bog to teach her the latest stone age craze - shedding your skin for clams while gyrating in time to a percussion band.

That made Bog the very first person to teach dancing. Ever.

This would be a good question for someone to pose to the Arthur Murray Dance Studio, whose dance instructors claim to know everything about dancing, but who actually know very little about something.  Go figure.

And now, I'm late for happy hour.