Begging goes way back. In the Neolithic Village environment it is a signal that someone needs help now, and if they get it they will be helpful to the community in the future. The most common form of distress is being a sick person who can be nursed to health, and the next most common an injured person. (Young mothers and children needing help are covered by a different signaling system: beauty.) The important part of this circumstance is the future payback. These individuals help the community thrive when good health returns.
But this signaling can be gamed. Much of the gaming is straightforward conniving of various sorts, but not all. One of the surprising forms of gaming is supporting entertainment. Entertainment is in part a spin-off from begging.
In the Neolithic Village environment people are subject to lots of nasty surprising events, and disability is a common outcome. Harsh logic says severe disability should be a signal to cut bait on a person, and in many circumstances it is. (An example: in western movies of the 1950's, the cowboy hero's horse would sometimes break a leg, and the hero would sorrowfully pull out his gun and shoot it to put it out of its misery. Interestingly this heart-tugging plot device has changed with time. In the 2010's the converse story is much more common: The soldier hero won't leave a buddy behind no matter how dire the circumstance.)
But one of the virtues of the human body is its ability to heal over time. When healing looked possible, the person would get succor not a split skull. The purpose of begging was to signal that while this person was currently disabled, healing was possible, and with it future benefit to the community.
The prosperity of civilized living has transformed begging. In modern times it is done with a lot more variety. Community members have a lot more stuff, which means they have more stuff they can give to someone who is tugging at their heart-strings. Charity, modern health care, and social support systems have sprung up in response to this signaling, and they have done a lot of good.
But begging has a dark side too. The dark side is gaming the system - a person advertises they are on hard times and takes donations, but rather than temporarily hard times this becomes a lifestyle choice for them. They become long-term advertisers. The iconic version of this is the “welfare queen”. This is a woman who successfully advertises to the welfare bureaucracy that she is in dire need, even as she is living a prosperous lifestyle.
If you've been disabled, and you're starting to recover, you start to feel... better! If as a result you get up and do a little singing and dancing, everyone who sees you feels better too. This is the root of street performing (busking), which is one of the roots of entertainment. Thanks to modern prosperity many entertainment styles have added festival-style celebrating to the emotion mix. But busking is still with us, and still tugging on begging heart-strings.
Begging goes a long way back in human cultures. It is a powerful signal that a person needs help, and if they get it they will recover from their misfortune, and when they do they will contribute to the welfare of the community.
In the civilized environment begging spreads into many different forms and activities. Many of these benefit the community, but because this is from-the-heart-thinking, it is easily gamed as well.