Who comes up with this stuff?

I tend to cogitate on random things at any given moment. This happens to be one of those moments. So I was wondering, who decided that the act of clapping denotes acquiescence, acknowledgment, appreciation, or gratitude? Imagine if instead of a positive, clapping was a negative? Like we would clap everytime we were upset, frustrated, disappointed, in disagreement etc. The faster we would clap would show how angry we were. lol. try it. its kinda funny. lol