Is Music an Evolutionary Adaptation?

Abstract

In contemplating the function and origin of music, a number of scholars have considered whether music might be an evolutionary adaptation. This article reviews the basic arguments related to evolutionary claims for music. Although evolutionary theories about music remain wholly speculative, musical behaviors satisfy a number of basic conditions, which suggests that there is indeed merit in pursuing possible evolutionary accounts.

Joint drumming: Social context facilitates synchronization in preschool children

“…We would like to put forward the idea that during joint rhythmic activities, this motivation includes an additional aspect, namely, the desire to move in synchrony. Several theoretical attempts have been made to account for the adaptive value of human musicality with special reference to rhythmic entrainment, for example, its role in male group signaling (Merker, 2000), mother-infant interaction (Dissanayake, 2000;Trevarthen, 1999Trevarthen, /2000, or social bonding and group cohesion (Bispham, 2006;Huron, 2001;McNeill, 1995). However, each of these accounts implies that the participants are motivated to synchronize their voices or body movements.…”

Metabolic and electric brain patterns during pleasant and unpleasant emotions induced by music masterpieces

“…Music is a humanly-produced complex auditory stimulus that is created, desired, and enjoyed mainly because of its powerful effects on emotions, feelings, and mood states (Thayer et al, 1994;Balkwill and Thompson, 1999;Huron, 2001;Baumgartner et al, 2006). Brain responses to experimentally-produced core musical features such as melodic stimuli (Zatorre et al, 1994;Patterson et al, 2002;Gagnon and Peretz, 2000), tonal information (Zatorre, 2001;Janata et al, 2002), musical timbre (Halpern et al, 2004), or rhythmic structure (Sakai et al, 1999;Samson et al, 2001) have been extensively studied.…”

Marching into battle: synchronized walking diminishes the conceptualized formidability of an antagonist in men

“…Likewise, synchronized chorusing is thought to signal alliance affiliation in many primates, and this is demonstrably so in chimpanzees [5]. The use of synchrony in humans is thus plausibly understood as the product of a trait that has evolved in a number of species, whereby synchronized behaviour signals coalitional size, solidarity and capacity for coordination-a signal of particular importance during intergroup competition [1,[6][7][8][9].…”