Evolution of Music

Elizabeth Phillips, NeuroArts Lab

Why do we care?
Music is a universal and multifunctional cultural behavior

“The study of music origins is central to the evolutionary study of human

cultural behavior”

Music evolution can also be used to trace cultural migrations and interactions
What is music?
“Organized sound to convey emotion”

Animal song? Speech? Language?

Two major elements:

Pitch and Rhythm

How and When did music evolve?
Rhythmic and vocal music are the oldest and most universal forms of music

Instruments are prehistoric

Written music is ancient, dating back to the earliest writing systems

In the Western Classical tradition, prehistoric and ancient music were followed by early, medieval,
renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, and 20th and 21st century music
Song and dance
The modern human voice is at least 530,000
years old

The location/shape of our larynx may even date

back 1-1.8 million years

A descended voice box makes the voice more

versatile

Larger range and better control

Song and dance
Human brains co-evolved with the rest of our
anatomy

Including our voice!

The neural mechanisms for controlling our

vocal cords were fine-tuned by 600-800
thousand years ago
Song and dance
Producing rhythm (ie clapping your hands) could even have predated
vocalizing

The evolution of music is closely linked to the evolution of gesture and dance

Did music evolve to accompany dance? Is dance a natural reaction

that evolved in response to music?

Evidence of beating on cave walls and stalactites

(naturally resonant) from 12,000 years ago

Rock gongs found all over the world

Prehistoric instruments
The oldest known instrument is a bone flute found in Germany, dated at over
42,000 years old

Some archaeologists debate that an older bone (43-60 thousand years old)
was also carved to be a flute
Prehistoric instruments
These bone flutes were discoverable because
they were made of hard materials

They are advanced, suggesting years

or generations of practice making instruments

Earlier instruments made of perishable

materials probably existed; they have just
been lost to time

Ex: bamboo or reed pipes

Prehistoric and ancient instruments
Whistles have been found dating back over 50,000 years ago

Hollowed gourds (early ocarinas) likely existed; those made of pottery in the
Neolithic period were well-practiced

Drums could have existed as early as skins could be dressed and dried

The existence of bows can be tracked by the existence of arrowheads; bows

are musical instruments as well as hunting tools

Idiophones, bullroarers, and rattles also existed

Why did music evolve?
Religion? Ritual?

Wooing?

Communication?

Entertainment? Dance?

Catharsis? Trance? Healing?

Why did musicality evolve?
A descended voice box has an evolutionary trade-off:

Increased chance of choking, and increased fatality of choking

Clapping hands and beating rocks also takes energy, and is often painful

So what made it worth it?

Why did musicality evolve?
There are multiple theories on why song evolved

Most agree that singing promotes social bonding in some form

Motherese, emotional communication, courtship, alarm calls

Similar reasons proposed for rhythmic music

Ensemble cohesion (rituals, war, dance, etc)

Important: everyone was a musician and dancer!

What did music evolve culturally?
Controlled fire and hearths became common between 800 and 400 thousand
years ago

Firelit socializing would have arisen during this time

The hominims had large and complex brains,

were social, creative and innovative

They lived in groups up to 120: requires

social cohesion, cooperation, and coordination

Storytelling (often with song) creates social bonds

Why did music evolve culturally?
Near the neolithic period, societies were becoming larger and complex

specialization, division of labor, social hierarchies, trade networks, etc

Signs of social status and competition became necessary

We see fancy beads and burial rites at this point

Ivory flutes, for example, require:

Production skill, costly raw material,

costly maintenance
Why did music evolve culturally?
Music became specialized too

At the end of the neolithic period (10 or 12 thousand years ago;

agricultural revolution) music became more sophisticated among the
educated and powerful

Somewhere between 5,000 and 2,000 years ago, we see a divide between
performers and audiences begin to form

Music could be perceived as “art” --

not only a normal part of domestic life
Example: Ancient Egypt
Music is especially depicted in lives of the elite class:

1. Rituals (especially burials)

2. Religious scenes
3. Court scenes
4. Military scenes
5. Sexual scenes

Archaeologists have found instruments,

sheet music, descriptions of musical activities,
statues of dancers and musicians, etc.
Example: Ancient Greece and Rome
In some other cultures, there is a clearer picture of how music existed as art
for the elite class while still existing in everyday life, for everyone

For example, in Greece there were professional musicians, competitive

musicians, and everyone else

Bards and court musicians had full-time jobs

The Pythian Games (before Olympics) were about music and poetry!

Everyone was expected to have knowledge of the folk (and drinking)

songs
Example: Ancient Greece and Rome
Music appears in the archaelogical records as a part of:

1. Theatre events
2. Festivals
3. Private parties
4. Domestic work
5. Manual labour
6. Military activities
7. Education
8. Religious ceremonies
9. Medicine
Still today?
Music still exists in most of those realms today

In the field of medicine, music has gone in and out of favour

The cathartic properties of music continued to be recognized

but with the rise of rational medicine and the theory of humors, it
was generally used on an individual level

Utilization of the most important evolutionary aspect of music (its social

bonding properties!) decreased as our societies grew in complexity
Closing thoughts
How does our music differ from animal song? From our own speech?

What is your first memory of singing or dancing?

Where does music appear in your life? What purposes does it serve in your
community?

How does music help to define or describe your culture?

Sources
Barras, C. (2014). Did early humans, or even animals, invent music? BBC Earth. Retrieved from
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20140907-does-music-pre-date-modern-man.

Killin, A. (2018). The origins of music: Evidence, theory, and prospects. Music & Science.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204317751971

Montagu, J. (2017). How Music and Instruments Began: A Brief Overview of the Origin and Entire
Development of Music, from Its Earliest Stages. Frontiers in Sociology.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2017.00008

Wallin, N. L., Merker, B., & Brown, S. (Eds.). (2001). The origins of music. MIT press. ISBN:
9780262731430