I once suggested in jest that the reason origami is so successful in calming people and bringing out conciliatory instincts is that humans are basically primates, and a calming activity that used to take up a lot of time in our social life--allogrooming--disappeared without a trace once we lost most of our body hair. There’s been no good replacement ever since, and origami is the first thing in a while that even comes close. All that intense concentration and fussing with fingers in a social context over something small that needs puzzling out. --Of course no one was really meant to take this sort of idea seriously, least of all me...
