in the long, long ago...forms were originally more like a Wai Ku than a fundamental method of martial training?

In Mongolian Bokh competitors perform a dance before they wrestle. Okinawa had folk dances with martial elements that predate Karate. Nak Muay perform their Wai Ku before a fight. It seems like most Asian martial arts have a dance element.

So is it possible the origin of forms training may have been more of a ritual than we let on? Could the current popular thinking about this tradition be completely misconstrued?

Just throwing it out there....