Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Musicality in human evolution, archaeology and ethnography

Iain Morley: The prehistory of music: human evolution, archaeology, and the origins of musicality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013

  • Published:
Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This essay reviews Iain Morley’s The Prehistory of Music, an up-to-date and authoritative overview of recent research on evolution and cognition of musicality from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. Given the diversity of the project explored, integration of evidence from multiple fields is particularly pressing, required for any novel evolutionary account to be persuasive, and for the project’s continued progress. Moreover, Morley convincingly demonstrates that there is much more to understanding musicality than is supposed by some theorists. I outline Morley’s review of the archaeological and ethnographic literature, and then go on to critique his assessment of philosophical and evolutionary theories, offering some alternative perspectives that might better benefit his project.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. All page references throughout cite The Prehistory of Music except where noted.

  2. Other prerequisites for musicality such as dependency sensitivity and pattern recognition are far more ancient, over 36 mya (Ravignani et al. 2013).

  3. This is a conservative figure, discounting items whose anthropogenesis or status as intentional sound-producer is contested (such as the infamous Divje babe I ‘Neanderthal flute’, pp. 38–41).

  4. Such a small sample size suggests that they were brought there (p. 47).

  5. Some theorists have speculated that kelp (Ecklonia maxima), common in some African environments (Anderson et al. 1997), was used for much earlier musical instrument production (e.g. Epsi-Sanchis and Bannan 2012); for a video demonstrating the production and performance of such instruments, simple yet capable of extraordinary musical expression, see <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AphqGZsWZxk> Accessed 19 Feb 2014.

  6. Contra expression theory, composers/performers might not experience the emotion that the music is said to be expressing. That is, some music may seem (say) sad independent of whatever the composer or performer feels. Contra arousal theory, sometimes circumstances can engender sad emotional responses in audience members of happy, lively music, for instance. Furthermore, for a listener to correctly respond to music’s expressivity (under standard conditions), she must recognise the emotion expressed by the music, which on pain of circularity cannot depend on her own emotional arousal. She can identify the music as sad without it actually making her sad.

  7. Indeed, Morley later claims that “The contours of musical stimuli can have much in common with physical (including vocal) expression of emotional state, stimulating the interpretation of emotion across the other media of expression that would normally be associated physically with that contour” (p. 315), which seems to be entirely compatible with Davies’ view.

  8. This is not to say that the view is without its dissenters; see e.g. Levinson (1996, 2006). For overview, see Kania (2012).

  9. Towards the end of the discussion, Morley reminds us that traditional music is predominately vocal and such (p. 265), but leaves the thought underdeveloped.

  10. For a broader overview of emotion and communication in traditional vocal musics, including a useful taxonomic system, see Trân Quang and Bannan (2012).

  11. Theories that fall outside of the scope of the framework—for instance the view attributed to Repp (1991) that music is a reasonably recent cultural product with no evolutionary consequence—are rejected since evidence discussed (e.g. development psychology, etc.) seems to contradict the idea that there are no innate biases for musical perception (pp. 278–279). Besides, Morley has given good reason to suppose that music predates the Upper Palaeolithic—long enough for genetic evolution to take place.

References

  • Anderson RJ, Carrick P, Levitt GJ, Share A (1997) Holdfasts of adult kelp Ecklonia maxima provide refuges from grazing for recruitment of juvenile kelps. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 159:265–273

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bannan N (ed) (2012) Music, language, and human evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Cassoli P, Tagliacozzo A (1997) Butchering and cooking of birds in the Palaeolithic site of Grotta Romanelli (Italy). Int J Osteoarchaeol 7:303–320

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collard M, Buchanan B, Ruttle A, O’Brien MJ (2011) Niche construction and the toolkits of hunter-gatherers and food producers. Biol Theory 6(3):251–259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conard N, Malina M (2008) New evidence for the origins of music from the caves of the Swabian Jura. In: Both AA, Eichmann R, Hickmann E, Koch L-Ch (eds) Orient-archäologie band 22: Studien zur Musikarchäologie VI, vol 22. Verlag Marie Leidorf GmbH, Rahden, pp 13–22

    Google Scholar 

  • Conard N, Malina M, Münzel SC (2009) New flutes document the earliest musical tradition in southwestern Germany. Nature 460:737–740

    Google Scholar 

  • Cross I (2007) Music and cognitive evolution. In: Barret L, Dunbar R (eds) Handbook of evolutionary psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • d’Errico F, Henshilwood C, Lawson G, Vanhaeren M, Tillier A-M, Soressi M, Bresson F, Maureille B, Nowell A, Lakarra J, Backwell L, Julien M (2003) Archaeological evidence for the emergence of language, symbolism, and music—an interdisciplinary perspective. J World Prehist 17(1):1–70

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davies S (2001) Philosophical perspectives on music’s expressiveness. In: Juslin P, Sloboda J (eds) Music and emotion: theory and research. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 23–44

    Google Scholar 

  • Davies S (2006) Artistic expression and the hard case of pure music. In: Kieran M (ed) Contemporary debates in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Blackwell, Malden, pp 179–191

    Google Scholar 

  • Davies S (2012) The artful species: aesthetics, art, and evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dissanayake E (1982) Aesthetic experience and human evolution. J Aesthetics Art Crit 41(2):145–155

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dissanayake E (2000) Antecedents of the temporal arts in early mother-infant interaction. In: Wallin N, Merker B, Brown S (eds) The origins of music. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 389–410

    Google Scholar 

  • Epsi-Sanchis P, Bannan N (2012) Found objects in the musical practices of hunter-gatherers: implications for the evolution of instrumental music. In: Bannan N (ed) Music, language, and human evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 173–198

    Google Scholar 

  • Hagan E, Bryant G (2003) Music and dance as a coalitional signalling system. Hum Nat 14:21–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Higham T, Basell L, Jacobi R, Wood R, Bronk Ramsey C, Conard N (2012) Testing models for the beginnings of the Aurignacian and the advent of figurative art and music: the radiocarbon chronology of Geißenklösterle. J Hum Evol 62:664–676

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kania A (2012) The philosophy of music. In: Zalta E (ed) Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2012 edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/music/. Accessed 23 Jan 2014

  • Kehoe A (1999) Blackfoot and other hunters of the North American Plains. In: Lee R, Daly R (eds) The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 36–40

    Google Scholar 

  • Killin A (2013) The arts and human nature: evolutionary aesthetics and the evolutionary status of art behaviours. Biol Philos 28(4):703–718

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn S, Stiner M (1998) The earliest Aurignacian of Riparo Mochi (Liguria, Italy). Curr Anthropol 39(3 suppl):175–189

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laland KN, O’Brien MJ (2011) Cultural niche construction: an introduction. Biol Theory 6(3):191–202

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levinson J (1996) The pleasures of aesthetics. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, pp 90–125

  • Levinson J (2006) Musical expressiveness as hearability-as-expression. In: Kieran M (ed) Contemporary debates in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Blackwell, Malden, pp 192–206

  • Livingstone SR, Thompson WF (2009) The emergence of music from the theory of mind. Music Sci 13(2 suppl):83–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McAllester D (1996) North America/Native America. In: Titon J (ed) Worlds of music: an introduction to the music of the world’s people. Schirmer, New York, pp 33–82

    Google Scholar 

  • McPherron SP, Alemseged Z, Marean CW, Wynn JG, Reed D et al (2010) Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia. Nature 466:857–860

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller G (2000) Evolution of human music through sexual selection. In: Wallin N, Merker B, Brown S (eds) The origins of music. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 329–360

    Google Scholar 

  • Odling-Smee J, Laland KN (2011) Ecological inheritance and cultural inheritance: what are they and how do they differ? Biol Theory 6(3):220–230

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Odling-Smee J, Turner JS (2011) Niche construction theory and human architecture. Biol Theory 6(3):283–289

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Patel A (2010) Music, biological evolution, and the brain. In: Bailar M, Field C, Henry CJ (eds) Emerging disciplines. Rice University Press, Houston, pp 91–144

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinker S (1997) How the mind works. Allen Lane, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Ravignani A, Sonnweber R-S, Stobbe N, Fitch WT (2013) Action at a distance: dependency sensitivity in a New World primate. Biol Lett 9(6):20130852

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Repp B (1991) Some cognitive and perceptual aspects of speech and music. In: Sundberg J, Nord L, Carlson R (eds) Music, language, speech and brain. MacMillan Press, Basingstoke, pp 257–268

    Google Scholar 

  • Savage PE, Brown S (2013) Toward a new comparative musicology. Anal Approaches World Music 2(2):148–197

    Google Scholar 

  • Stiner M, Munro N, Surovell T (2000) The tortoise and the hare: small-game use, the broad-spectrum revolution, and paleolithic demography. Curr Anthropol 41(1):39–73

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thieme H (1997) Lower Palaeolithic hunting spears from Germany. Nature 385:807–810

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trân Quang H, Bannan N (2012) Vocal traditions of the world: towards an evolutionary account of voice production in music. In: Bannan N (ed) Music, language, and human evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 142–172

    Google Scholar 

  • Trehub S (2003) The developmental origins of musicality. Nature Neurosci 6(7):669–673

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallin N, Merker B, Brown S (eds) (2000) The origins of music. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Watt R, Ash R (1998) A psychological investigation of meaning in music. Music Sci 2:33–54

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Kim Sterelny and Stuart Brock for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. I have also benefited from discussions on related themes with Kim Shaw-Williams and Adrian Currie.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand

    Anton Killin

Authors
  1. Anton Killin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anton Killin.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Killin, A. Musicality in human evolution, archaeology and ethnography. Biol Philos 29, 597–609 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9438-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9438-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation