How We Became Musical.

When you think about Darwin’s Evolution Theory, how organisms through time developed and changed over time through natural selection and how organisms adapted and inherited variations of genetics that increased their chance of survival and to reproduce. How did human musicality come into being if it serves no direct purpose for survival?

Just like smiling, music is a universally innate human trait.

Our brains underwent drastic changes during evolution which allowed for us to comprehend and analyze things with greater scrutiny it allowed for us to become musical.

From an evolutionary standpoint, having bigger brains meant having a greater capacity of being able to be aware of surroundings, which also allowed us to analyze our surrounding and act accordingly.

Our ancestors learned how to differentiate the calls of different animals between predators and prey. Hearing is our main sense that we rely on the most, in the dark you can still hear what is around you, but you cannot see. However, in order for them to be able to hear the call of animals and interpret it as safe or unsafe required a lot of brain power. In order to analyze sounds your brain needs to be able to interpret a variety of aspects of the sound so it does not just sound like isolated chunks of noise. You are unaware of it but your brain and ears pick up melodies, rhythms, textures and other defining characteristics of a sound. Once your brain takes it apart and analyzes it, your brain pieces it back together and you interpret it as music, sound or language.

Side Note**
Human hearing got so sensitive that we can hear the sound and also “see” where the sound is coming from. You can understand and pinpoint where the sound is coming but only on the horizontal axis. Since our ancestors dealt with predators only on the ground we cannot pinpoint sound if it’s coming from above or below (the vertical axis). You can fix this though by simply tilting your head to the side. This is why you’ll sometimes see animals tilt their heads, they’re trying to pinpoint where the sound is coming from but they only have horizontal hearing.

Once our ancestors had big enough brains and learned to understand their natural soundscape and all its meanings, it gave way to allowing us to develop a way of communication. Since the moment humans were smart enough to adapt the environment to their needs instead of adapting to them, certain procedures, systems, and traditions came into being. There are some scholars that believe that biological evolution gave way to cultural adaptions about 35,000 years ago.

Being surrounded by a never silent environment and with larger brains, humans easily began to move away from mimicking sounds to creating their own. Though language at the time would have been vague and simple vocalizations, we had big enough brain power to interpret meaning and emotion behind the ‘words’. In order to communicate emotion and meaning through words one needs to be able to analyze pitch, rhythms, melody, timbre. Example: When someone is happy and excited, they will start to talk faster and louder while also talking in a ‘major’ key. Or when someone is sad they will slur their words, talk in a minor key and talk slower. Humans had to learn how to interpret language patterns. Humans at the time where close to becoming musical since they were being musical with their communication whether they knew it or not.

Another evolutionary benefit to becoming musical is parent-infant bonding. As our brains were getting bigger, it meant that birth would become increasingly difficult. It resulted with nature deciding that human babies would be born with incomplete development of the brain and skull plates not yet fused together to make birthing easier, which would increase chances of a successful birth for both baby and mother. With fragile young, they are dependent on their parents for a long time. How did nature encourage the parents not to abandon their infants after a year of being annoyed with their constant need to be looked after? Bonding. Bonding made sure the infant was looked after, the parents would be more inclined to make sure their offspring succeeded for the biological goal of passing on genes, though to them they felt that they did it out of love for their baby.

Vocalizations are the primary way babies communicate since they don’t know any other way. A lot of human behavior is not instinct but learned. Babies learn quite quickly how to communicate to parents through cries. They even develop different kinds of cries that mean different things. So if vocalizations are the primary way of communication for a baby, how are parents supposed to communicate back feelings of love and affection? Music. A lot of the “baby-talk” that adults do to babies, kittens, puppies and anything small and cute derived from feeling the need to bond with your offspring. Babies require a lot of time, attention and love to grow and develop successfully. So to make sure our ancestors bonded with their offspring to ensure the survival of the next generation, creating a form of music was needed. Baby-talk is literally just manipulation of pitch, rhythms, dynamics, tempo. This lead to creating small simple melodies that were sung to babies. This added to humans becoming musical.

With the acquisition of language came with the need to express feelings and cope with emotions. Music played a role in a unique way. Words in a language began to be manipulated in certain ways to convey emotion. Music is thought to be one of the most powerful ways to express feelings without acting on them. When you’re angry, maybe you feel like starting a fight. When you’re sad, maybe you feel like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Music allowed for us to separate actions from feelings. When you’re sad, you turn on your iPod and pop in some earbuds and listen to your favorite song. Music is somewhat of a survival mechanism. Our ancestors turned to music to express emotion when words weren’t enough.

Another reason as to why music came into being is how music unifies people. In prehistoric times, tribes that hunt or go to war, drums would be beaten as a way to encourage and unify the people and to comfort those who stayed in the colony. A lot of the knowledge in ancient civilizations were passed on from generation to generation verbally. Nothing was written down until later. Transferring the knowledge to each generation was crucial to survival, and since not a lot of people were literate, verbal communication was their only option. But memorizing a lot of information from many generations must have been difficult, so mnemonic devices were created in forms of chants, songs, poems and dances. With the success of transferring critical information from generation to generation meant greater chance of survival and growth of the community. As chants, poems, and songs grew in number with additions of information and stories to pass along to younger generations music slowly began to take form.

Everyone, at some point in time experiences music. It plays a significant part in everyone’s life everywhere in the world. Becoming musical was probably one of the greatest things that ever happened to human kind. Could you imagine the world with no music?

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All pictures from google - Images Labeled for reuse.