The self-domestication hypothesis suggests that, like mammalian domesticates, humans have gone through a process of selection against aggression-a process that in the case of humans was self-induced. Here, we extend previous proposals and suggest that what underlies human social evolution is selection for socially mediated emotional control and plasticity. In the first part of the paper we highlight general features of human social evolution, which, we argue, is more similar to that of other social mammals than to that of mammalian domesticates and is therefore incompatible with the notion of human self-domestication. In the second part, we discuss the unique aspects of human evolution and propose that emotional control and social motivation in humans evolved during two major, partially overlapping stages. The first stage, which followed the emergence of mimetic communication, the beginnings of musical engagement, and mimesis-related cognition, required socially mediated emotional plasticity and was accompanied by new social emotions. The second stage followed the emergence of language, when individuals began to instruct the imagination of their interlocutors, and to rely even more extensively on emotional plasticity and culturally learned emotional control. This account further illustrates the significant differences between humans and domesticates, thus challenging the notion of human self-domestication.

Music and language are both universal but diverse cultural traits shaped by cultural and biological evolution. However, there is disagreement on the relationships between music, language, and human history. Some argue that musical and linguistic similarities trace ancient migrations of people and their cultures, while others argue that they primarily reflect more recent contact between neighboring societies and local micro-evolution independent of population migration. Previous direct comparisons of musical, genetic, and linguistic diversity were restricted to small regional samples that gave conflicting results. Here, we analyze global patterns of diversity from newly public global databases containing over 5,000 traditional songs with standardized “Cantometric” codings and genomic profiles from over 4,000 individuals. We directly compare musical, linguistic, and genetic diversity for a subset of 152 matched societies (represented by 1,054 songs, genomic profiles of 1,719 individuals, and 152 languages). For both genes and music, differences within groups are greater than those between groups, but musical differences between groups are approximately three times greater than genetic differences. Song style and basic vocabulary both show relatively weak relationships with each other and with genetic distance and geographic proximity, in contrast to the much stronger relationships found between genes and geography. Thus, to our surprise, our findings suggest that music and language are weak proxies for human migrations.

Theories of music evolution rely on our understanding of what music is. Here, I argue that music is best conceptualized as an interactive technology, and propose a coevolutionary framework for its emergence. I present two basic models of attachment formation through behavioral alignment applicable to all forms of affiliative interaction and argue that the most critical distinguishing feature of music is entrained temporal coordination. Music's unique interactive strategy invites active participation and allows interactions to last longer, include more participants, and unify emotional states more effectively. Regarding its evolution, I propose that music, like language, evolved in a process of collective invention followed by genetic accommodation. I provide an outline of the initial evolutionary process which led to the emergence of music, centered on four key features: technology, shared intentionality, extended kinship, and multilevel society. Implications of this framework on music evolution, psychology, cross-species and cross-cultural research are discussed.

Recently, a growing number of studies have considered the role of language in the social transmission of tool-making skill during human evolution. In this article, I address this question in light of a new theory of language and its evolution, and review evidence from anthropology and experimental archaeology related to it. I argue that the specific function of language—the instruction of imagination—is not necessary for the social transmission of tool-making skill. Evidence from hunter-gatherer ethnographies suggests that social learning relies mainly on observation, participation, play, and experimentation. Ethnographies of traditional stone cultures likewise describe group activities with simple, context-bound interactions embedded in the here and now. Experiments comparing gestural and verbal teaching of tool-making skills also demonstrate that language is not necessary for that process. I conclude that there is no convincing evidence that language played an important role in the social transmission of lithic technology, although the possibility that linguistic instruction was involved as part of the social interactions accompanying tool-making cannot be excluded.

In this commentary, we discuss two aspects of The Ritual Animal’s (2021) rich and multidimensional framework which may be further developed: the role of music and euphoric rituals within Harvey Whitehouse’s modes theory, and the use of the landscape model for studying sociocultural systems. We note the strong, cross-cultural association of music and religious rituals, consider the suitability of music for such practices, and suggest further research on how the use of music may accommodate both imagistic and doctrinal rituals. We then describe the social landscape model used by Whitehouse and consider his proposal to extend the model through the consideration of multiple landscapes at different levels. We accept his suggestion to explicitly include underlying and overlying networks of inputs but argue that since the interacting networks are not external to but constitutive of the landscape, a single landscape with multiple causal, constraining, and constitutive networks may better capture the integrated nature of social systems.

Music is a universal, diverse cultural trait shaped by cultural and biological evolution. The extent to which global musical diversity traces the historical movements of people and their cultures is unresolved, with regional studies producing mixed results. Using a global musical dataset of 5,242 songs and 719 societies we identify five axes of musical diversity and show that musical traits contain geographically constrained patterns of between-society diversity. We pair musical data to genetic and linguistic datasets spanning 121 societies containing 981 songs, 1,296 individual genetic profiles, and 121 languages, showing that musical traditions contain similar, albeit weaker, patterns of spatial decay to linguistic diversity and genetic diffusion. However, the structure of musical similarity is different to linguistic or genetic histories. Musical relationships correlate with genetic and linguistic relationships within some regions, but not globally. Our results suggest that global musical traditions are distinct from non-musical aspects of human history.

Music is an interactive technology associated with religious rituals and communal events, and is suggested to have evolved as a participatory activity supporting social bonding. In post-industrial societies, however, music’s communal role was eclipsed by its relatively passive consumption by audiences disconnected from performers. It was suggested that as societies became larger and more differentiated, music became less participatory and more focused on professional performers and solo singing. Here, we consider the prevalence of group singing and several hypotheses about its relationship to social organization through the analysis of two global song corpora: 5,776 coded audio recordings from 1,024 societies, and 4,709 coded ethnographic texts from 60 societies. We find that in both corpora, group singing is more common than solo singing overall and in most societies. Group singing prevalence depends not only on sociopolitical complexity — with greater emphasis on soloists associated with increased social differentiation — but also on regional variation and on the social context of the performance, with group singing more likely during religious rituals, and solo singing more likely in the context of healing and mourning. Overall, our findings provide further support for the interactive nature of music and its complex relationship with social organization.