Tap dance is a unique combination of the Irish jig, a British folk dance called the Lancashire Clog, and African tribal dances.  The Irish jig, which dates back to the year 466, was much like today's popularized Riverdance, characterized by the dancer's stiff upper body and rapidly moving lower limbs.  In England around the time of the Industrial Revolution, local workers wearing wooden clogs designed to protect their feet from harsh working conditions would gather for frequent and fierce dance competitions which tested the dancer's innovation in rhythmic stylings and the sounds produced with his clog-clad feet.  This Lancashire Clog paralleled the Irish jig in that it required little upper body movement and instead focused solely on the dance's intricate footwork.  African tribal dances, on the other hand, made use of the entire body.  Different tribes concentrated on different parts of their bodies more than others; the Dahomean tribesmen, for example, concentrated on head and shoulder movement.  Also in contrast to European dances, African dance was flat-footed and produced little or no sound.

Origins

African dance was first introduced to European dance on the slave trade ships to America.  Forced to dance in order to entertain as well as keep warm and fit, the newly captured Africans performed their dance rituals before the ship's other passengers.  In turn, the crewmen danced their European step dances on deck also to keep fit and the Africans had their first look at what was to be the other ancestors of tap.

Once they reached American soil and were employed in the plantations of the South, the African slaves resorted to dancing as a means of entertainment, using their hands and feet to set the rhythm, as they were forbidden to use instruments since they were initially used as a mode of communication with other slaves.  In the early 1800's, Irish jig dancers often went through southern country and the Africans had the opportunity to observe the jig and incorporate that into their native dances.  Plantation owners seeking diversion bade their slaves to dance for them; the African slaves mocked white society with these dances, over-exaggerating the classical dances in which white people took part.  This came to be known as the cakewalk, and was named as such because of the cake the slave owner offered to the slave who performed best.

African slaves used ingenuity and wit to alter their native dance and combine with it aspects of dances that surrounded them in their new country, America.  It was from Africans that professional dancers would borrow and send to a broader audience a dance form that would eventually be called tap dance.

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