Human aggression and music evolution: a model

Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. Following the lead of paleolinguistic research, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the theory of self-domestication, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to mammal domestication, triggered by a progressive reduction in reactive aggression levels in response to environmental changes. In the paper, we specifically argue that changes in aggression management through the course of human cultural evolution can account for the behaviors conducive to the emergence and evolution of music. We hypothesize 4 stages in the evolutionary development of music under the influence of environmental changes and evolution of social organization: starting from musilanguage, proto-music gave rise to personal and private forms of timbre-oriented music, then to small-group ensembles of pitch-oriented music, at first of indefinite and then definite pitch, and finally to collective (tonal) music. These stages parallel what has been hypothesized for languages and encompass the diversity of music types and genres described worldwide. Overall, music complexity emerges in a gradual fashion under the effects of enhanced abilities for cultural niche construction, resulting from the stable trend of reduction in reactive aggression towards the end of the Pleistocene, leading to the rise of hospitality codes, and succeeded by increase in proactive aggression from the beginning of the Holocene onward. This paper addresses numerous controversies in the literature on the evolution of music by providing a clear structural definition of music, identifying its structural features that distinguish it from oral language, and summarizing the typology of operational functions of music and formats of its transmission. The proposed framework of structural approach to music arms a researcher with means to identify and comparatively analyze different schemes of tonal organization of music, placing them in the context of human social and cultural evolution. Especially valuable contribution to the understanding of transition from animal communication to human music and language is the theory of so-called “personal song”, described and analyzed here from ethological, social, cultural, cognitive, and musicological perspectives. The emergence of personal song and its development into a social institution are interlinked with the evolution of kinship and placed into the timeline of cultural evolution, based on totality of ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and paleoclimatic data.

Music and philosophical naturalism

<p>The philosophical and scientific explication of music is a cutting-edge field in contemporary academia. This thesis develops a naturalistic framework for theorising about music. The following novel philosophical positions are motivated and defended: a polysemy analysis of “sound”, conceptual pluralism about music, a pluralistic framework for approaching the science of music, and a fictionalist account of Western musical artworks. The adaptation/ by-product framework for couching discussion about the evolution of music is critiqued. A novel, co-evolutionary, niche construction model of the foundations of musicality and the origins, expansion and stabilisation of music is developed, couched in the general context of hominin evolution and prehistory. Conceptual and methodological reflection accompanies the evolutionary scenario developed.</p>

Music and philosophical naturalism

<p>The philosophical and scientific explication of music is a cutting-edge field in contemporary academia. This thesis develops a naturalistic framework for theorising about music. The following novel philosophical positions are motivated and defended: a polysemy analysis of “sound”, conceptual pluralism about music, a pluralistic framework for approaching the science of music, and a fictionalist account of Western musical artworks. The adaptation/ by-product framework for couching discussion about the evolution of music is critiqued. A novel, co-evolutionary, niche construction model of the foundations of musicality and the origins, expansion and stabilisation of music is developed, couched in the general context of hominin evolution and prehistory. Conceptual and methodological reflection accompanies the evolutionary scenario developed.</p>

Music Lessons for the Study of Affect

Some accounts of the evolution of music suggest that it emerged from emotionally expressive vocalizations and serves as a necessary counterweight to the cognitive elaboration of language. Thus, emotional expression appears to be intrinsic to the creation and perception of music, and music ought to serve as a model for affect itself. Because music exists as patterns of changes in sound over time, affect should also be seen in patterns of changing feelings. Psychologists have given relatively little attention to these patterns. Results from statistical approaches to the analysis of affect dynamics have so far been modest. Two of the most significant treatments of temporal patterns in affect—sentics and vitality affects have remained outside mainstream emotion research. Analysis of musical structure suggests three phenomena relevant to the temporal form of emotion: affect contours, volitional affects, and affect transitions. I discuss some implications for research on affect and for exploring the evolutionary origins of music and emotions.

The Unification of the Arts

The Unification of the Arts presents the first integrated cognitive account of the arts that attempts to unite all of the arts into a single framework, covering visual art, theatre, literature, dance, and music, with supporting discussions about creativity and aesthetics that span all of the arts. The book’s comparative approach identifies both what is unique to each artform and what artforms share with one another. An understanding of shared mechanisms sheds light on how the arts are able to combine with one another to form syntheses, such as choreographing dance movements to music, or setting lyrics to music to create a song. While most psychological analyses of the arts focus on perceptual mechanisms alone—most commonly aesthetic responses—the book offers a holistic sensorimotor account of the arts that examines the full gamut of processes from creation to perception for each artform. This allows for a broad discussion of the evolution of the arts, including the origins of rhythm, the co-evolution of music and language, the evolution of drawing, and cultural evolution of the arts. Finally, the book aims to unify a number of topics that have not been adequately related to one another in previous discussions, including theatre and literature, music and language, creativity and aesthetics, dancing and acting, and visual art and music. The Unification of the Arts provides a bold new approach to the integration of the arts, one that covers cognition, evolution, and neuroscience.

Cultural evolution and music

The universality and diversity of music in human societies make it an important research model for understanding how cultural features change over time and space. In this chapter, we review research on the cultural evolution of music, broken down into three major approaches: 1) corpus-based approaches that use large datasets to infer evolutionary patterns, 2) experimental approaches that explore cultural transmission and transformation, and 3) research on “music-like” behaviors in non-human species, such as bird and whale song, that highlights shared mechanisms and future directions. Finally, we discuss applications of this research to issues like copyright enforcement and algorithmic inequality. Given the diversity of musical datasets that have yet to be fully leveraged, we think that music has the potential to become a powerful research model for cultural evolution.

THE EVOLUTION OF MUSIC IN THE BUDDHIST PERIOD

English - Indian art and culture, in any case are a joint creation of the dravadian and Aryan genius a welding together of symbolic and representative, abstract explicit language and thought. Already at Bharhut and Sanchi, 'The Aryan symbal is yielding to its environment and passing into decoration kushan art with the fact of imagery and its roots in bhakti is essentially Darvidian'. Already, however, the Indian shanti Figure at Bodhgaya shows Aryan affecting Dravidian models of expression, anticipating the essential of all latar 'Sativik Images'. Hindi - बुद्ध काल में मठों में संकीर्तन की तरह संगीत का प्रचलन प्रारम्भ हुआ। भगवान बुद्ध स्वयं एक उत्तम संगीतज्ञ थे। महात्मा बुद्ध ने ईश्वर प्राप्ति और मोक्ष अथवा निर्वाण हेतु बौद्ध धर्म के सरल तथा सुगम मार्ग का प्रवर्तन किया। उन्होंने प्राचीन मंत्रो, आध्यात्मिक गीतों तथा नृत्य आदि को नीरांजन (आरती) के लिए उपयुक्त मानते हुए संस्कृतनिष्ठ प्रार्थनाओं के स्थान पर देशी भाषाओं में रचित प्रार्थनाओं के प्रयोग पर बल दिया। उन्होने कृष्ण की प्रतिमाओं के प्रति विशेष श्रद्धा प्रकट की। बौद्ध युग की कला एवं संस्कृति तथा कलाकृतियों में आर्य तथा द्रविड़ जातियों से ग्रहण की गई आध्यात्मिक परम्पराओं तथा इष्ट देवों की पूजा-विधियों के ही पुनर्दर्शन होते हैं। इस संदर्भ में डाॅ. स्वरूप कुमार स्वामी का यह कथन दृष्टव्य है।

Toward a productive evolutionary understanding of music

We discuss approaches to the study of the evolution of music (sect. R1); challenges to each of the two theories of the origins of music presented in the companion Target Articles (sect. R2); future directions for testing them (sect. R3); and priorities for better understanding the nature of music (sect. R4). [in press, Behavioral and Brain Sciences]

Human Genomics and the Biocultural Origin of Music

Music is an exclusive feature of humankind. It can be considered as a form of universal communication, only partly comparable to the vocalizations of songbirds. Many trends of research in this field try to address music origins, as well as the genetic bases of musicality. On one hand, several hypotheses have been made on the evolution of music and its role, but there is still debate, and comparative studies suggest a gradual evolution of some abilities underlying musicality in primates. On the other hand, genome-wide studies highlight several genes associated with musical aptitude, confirming a genetic basis for different musical skills which humans show. Moreover, some genes associated with musicality are involved also in singing and song learning in songbirds, suggesting a likely evolutionary convergence between humans and songbirds. This comprehensive review aims at presenting the concept of music as a sociocultural manifestation within the current debate about its biocultural origin and evolutionary function, in the context of the most recent discoveries related to the cross-species genetics of musical production and perception.

The evolution of music

This chapter explores how the representation of music has developed within human cultures. It begins by discussing the soundscapes of prehistoric landscapes, in order to better understand the acoustic ecologies of the past. This is followed by investigating the role of music within societies, addressing how music interacts with work, ritual, and trance. Discussion of lithophones, drums, and dancing is followed by addressing bone pipes, the earliest musical instrument archaeologists found, exploring music as technology for socialization and community. Bronze horns in Europe such as the Carnyx and Greek and Roman music provide evidence of complex technological processes applied to music making, showing an increasing sophistication in the use of technology to create sonic meanings. The paper concludes that the representation of meaning in sound through an aural symbolic language, combines semiotics and embodied knowledge in complex networks of understanding that play a significant role in human cultures.