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The Journal of Music and Meaning, 5, Summer 2007, section 7
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Review of Steven Mithen: The Singing Neanderthals. Weidenfeld & Nicholson
2005, Harvard University Press 2006.
Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard
Introduction.
Every human society uses music in some or other form, and music must therefore be assumed to be
an ancestral trait in humans, like other art forms. It is natural then, to speculate about the origin of
music in the context of evolutionary history. Compared to other art forms, however, the problem of
music is that it does not fossilize well or leave other permanent traces. The traveller was able to
form an impression of Ozymandias from the shattered visage and inscription in the desert, but the
rocks were silent. When standing in the ruins of a monastery like Cluny, so important in the
development of Western polyphony, the traveller could have no impression of the music once
resounding there, were it not for the development of a notational system that has preserved the
rudiments of musical practice. Therefore, (too) much weight is often laid on the archaeological
remnants of musical instruments, e.g. old wind instruments like the much debated Divje Babe flute,
found in a Neanderthal settlement in present Slovenia. Music could have originated in human
vocalization (e.g. song) long before any instruments were invented, however, and the early history
of music will probably always remain obscure. The best chance we have to understand the history is
to integrate information from many different fields – ethnomusicology, archaeology, cognitive
science and neurophysiology. A valid attempt at such a synthesis is offered in the book The Singing
Neanderthals by the archaeologist Steven Mithen, and while the synthesis offered is necessarily
speculative, it is well-argued. His evolutionary narrative in my opinion is one of the most
interesting presented so far.
Mithen reviews the current theories of the origin of music in an evolutionary context. Here, one
speculates about the evolutionary meaning of music, i.e. in which ways music could increase the
chances of survival of its protagonists and their offspring. Such selection benefits could accrue in
many different ways, both as increased reproductive success of the individual, as featured in sexual
selection hypotheses, through improved communication between mother and infant or through
benefits to a group of (related) individuals, for example by furthering social structure and group
cohesion. Central in all discussions of human evolution is the role of language. There is a complex
interdependence between language and social structure: A stable society is beneficial for language
acquisition, but language also promotes social structure. If music has had a role in stabilizing early
human society, it could have influenced both society and language.
Music and Language.
It is clear that music, especially song, is closely related to human language. Language is such a
complicated phenomenon that this observation in itself is not really helpful, however, and some
researchers, notably Steven Pinker (1997), have seen music as a spin-off from the language
processing functions of the brain. This idea is dismissed by Mithen, partly because music is such a
universal human phenomenon, and partly because there are plausible adaptive hypotheses.
The first chapters describe the relationship between music and language and the underlying neural
processing. Much of the information here is relatively well-known, mostly coming from lesions
either affecting ‘language’ or music processing. The results are not very clear-cut, but indicate a
certain dissociation between music and language, and according to the findings of Peretz (2002) a
certain modularity of music processing, although centers dedicated to music processing have not
been convincingly demonstrated. Also, there are many different aspects of language – semantics,
syntax, prosody to name a few, and it is likely that a defect in processing with regard to one or the
other of these aspects will not affect music processing to the same extent. Mithen surprisingly does
not mention a very interesting finding by Robert Zatorre and co-workers (Zatorre et al. 2002)
suggesting a specialization of the left and right temporal lobe; in most subjects the left
predominantly responds to high-frequency modulation of tones and the right to low-frequency
modulations. High-frequency modulation characterizes the fast envelope fluctuations in speech that
carry most of the semantic content, whereas low-frequency modulation characterizes not only
prosody, but also melodic contours. I think that the connection between music and prosody (in the
sense of speech melody) that Mithen endorses is very convincing and backed by these studies (see
also Christensen-Dalsgaard 2004). Another strong example of the connection between music and
prosody is mother-infant communication, excellently reviewed in ch. 6. As shown by Colwyn
Trevarthen (1979), Dissanayake (2000) and others, the infant-directed speech (IDS) of parents is
characterized by “exaggerated prosody”: it is slower and exhibits steeper pitch contours than normal
speech. Furthermore, studies reviewed in the chapter show that infants will respond appropriately to
IDS even when the semantic content is filtered out, i.e. to prosody only.
Music and Emotion.
It is often stated that music is the language of emotions. Unfortunately, what is meant by “emotion”
is never very clearly defined. In ch. 7, it is stated that all emotions are “variants of happiness, anger,
sadness, fear and disgust.” That leaves out basic urges as hunger, thirst and sexual desires, but also
a very important feeling – that something is just and right. In other words, I think this definition of
emotions may be too restrictive. A much more inclusive definition would be that emotion was all
human thinking that could not be characterized as rational. In that case, it is clear that music
communicates emotion. I am strongly sceptical of the claims of specific tone intervals being able to
precisely and universally communicate emotion, as proposed by Cooke (1959, discussed in
Christensen-Dalsgaard 2004). Firstly, music does not work that way for me (or for the people I have
asked in an unofficial survey) – rather than communicating specific emotions like happiness, anger
etc, what I sense is being communicated is a feeling of the music being “well made” or “just and
right.” Secondly, the examples cited by Cooke to show that specific intervals have specific
emotional meaning are not universal and can be contradicted by examples from medieval and
renaissance music. Thirdly, if there were a well-defined emotional code, is it not surprising, that it is
never mentioned in the composers’ usually very straightforward instructions with regard to
compositional technique? The Affektenlehre in baroque music, as featured e.g. in Matthesohn
(1739), is often held in support of well-defined emotional codes; the aim here, however, was rather
to depict emotion (the ravings of an angry man, for example) than to communicate emotion (i.e., in
this case, to make the listeners angry), in my opinion.
Sound Communication in Primates.
To get an idea of the sound communication of our ancestors Mithen reviews sound communication
in our nearest relatives among the primates (ch 8.). The chapter is a good review of the diverse
types of communication in the primates. It is notable that the vocal communication of our nearest
relatives – the great apes – is fairly simple with few distinct call types. In other, more distantly
related species, however, such as the celebrated vervet monkeys, communication is more
sophisticated. In a fascinating study, Struhsaker, Cheney and Seyfarth (Cheney and Seyfarth, 1990)
were able to show that vervet monkeys have distinct calls for different predators, corresponding to
different behavioral responses. The alarm call for a snake, for example, induces other vervets to
raise themselves high on their legs and peek into the ground, whereas the alarm call for a hawk
induces the monkeys to seek cover under trees. The calls are distinct and categorical. They are also,
as Mithen claims quoting Alison Wray, holistic, however, in the sense that they cannot be combined
or constructed from meaningful subunits – the snake call means ‘beware of the snake’ (or maybe
more accurate even ‘beware of dangerous animal creeping in grass’). Therefore, this is not a
language in the sense that it enables the monkeys to refer in the abstract to snakes, leopards or
hawks. In these calls, like in most other animal calls, there is also a reference to the emotional state
of the animal – whether it is scared, angry etc. It should be noted, though, that no animal would
benefit from communicating its emotional state reliably –rather, what is communicated is a filtered,
sometimes deceptive version of its emotional state.
Other primates have very long calls used in social interactions. The most celebrated case, the great
call of the gibbons can last between six and eighty minutes; these calls, like the calls of gelada
monkeys are tonal and therefore sound ‘musical’ with similar use of rhythm and melody as in
human speech and song. It is unclear, however, whether this is just caused by analogous use of
similar vocal systems in humans or geladas (there are limited ways to excite the physical structures
in the vocal system) or whether the similarity is an ancestral property. It would have been useful to
discuss the calls in relation to environmental acoustics. Generally, tonal calls propagate much better
in cluttered environments such as rain forests than more bark- or grunt-like calls, and the different
call types may be specializations for long vs. close range communication. The question of range is
highly relevant in the context of music (song), and it might have been helpful here if Mithen had
tried to delineate the acoustical differences between speech and song. It is clear that there are two
major differences: duration and the relative importance of vowel sounds. Most speech elements are
short (50 ms or less) compared to the basic rhythm of song (0.5 to 1 s), and song can be described
roughly as a way to increase the sound energy by lengthening the vowels whereas normal speech
essentially is a short-range signal. This observation already suggests one function of song – long
distance communication at the expense of speed.
Turning now to the evolution of early man, Mithen reviews the archaeological/fossil evidence in
three major areas: evolution of language, cognition and bipedalism. There are many interesting
points here; one that I find particularly interesting is the hypothesis that bipedalism itself had great
implications for rhythm (by freeing up the upper part of the torso, the arms and especially the hands
to perform independent movements) and maybe also for song (changes in the attachment of the
spine to the cranium may have caused changes in the position of the larynx). The keystone of the
book is Mithen’s hypothesis that early human ancestors and also the Neanderthals did not have a
symbolic language, but rather a ‘musical’ form of vocal communication that Mithen calls ‘hmmm’
(for holistic (not composed of meaningful subunits), multi-modal (both sound and gesture),
manipulative and musical). This type of communication is believed to be used in mother-infant
interactions as in recent humans, but also for ritualistic group activities. This communication type is
similar to the musilanguage proposed by Brown (Brown, 2000), and is very likely to have existed in
our ancestors, since this is essentially the communication found in other primates (except that the
early human ancestors are assumed to have had a much larger vocal repertoire). Direct evidence for
the assumptions is, of course, meager. In particular, I am not convinced that the early humans
should have had no symbolic language. The argument is based on the absence of symbolic art like
cave paintings from the Neanderthals, and the observation that their society seemed to be static. It is
tenuous to conclude from the absence of evidence. The Neanderthals might have decorated
perishable objects or even had – in line with Mithen’s view of their musicality – song and dance
rites that would leave no trace. Secondly, since Hmmm- communication is generally similar to
communication in other primates, it is unclear to me what the special musical feature of the
communication should be. After all, any animal communication could be called musical. What does
the hypothesis really tell us about music? Music as we know it today is neither holistic, nor
multimodal, necessarily. Conversely, music is characterized by subunits that can be combined in
many different ways, and the existence of musical instruments (that are devices precisely for
producing many different combinations of these subunits) suggest that this non-holistic approach is
ancient. Furthermore, as a means of communication about anything, music is highly ambiguous.
Finally, I think Mithen exaggerates the group synchronization element in music. Certainly, much of
the music making in Western culture has been solistic, for example in the form of long, epic chants.
Let us now assume, however, that there was such a Hmmm musilanguage among our early
ancestors, as stated above; a safe assumption given what we know about primate communication. It
is likely that this ancient communication system would have been retained when the “modern”
syntactical and combinatorial language evolved, but not unchanged of course; it probably coevolved into what we know as prosody, the speech melody that carries important information not
only about emotion, but also about syntax (delineating the elements of speech). Therefore, we have
no access to the original Hmmm language, and if music is related to prosody, it probably also
changed beyond recognition. Evolution provides many examples of structures whose function
becomes completely changed through evolutionary history, so common ancestry is not necessarily
any clue to function (and, conversely, common function is not a clue to common ancestry).
One problem here is that so very little is known about the Neanderthals, and one would be on safer
grounds talking about music among our immediate ancestors, where we at least can infer many
details about language, symbolism and general cognition from the shared similarities among recent
humans. The shift in focus to the Neanderthals seems to me to introduce an unnecessarily wide
berth for speculation.
I find the book very stimulating and highly readable nevertheless. Mithen concludes by requesting
the reader to listen to music and even to make his/her own music. I deeply sympathize with this;
one of the problems we have in understanding music is that it is a language so few of us are using,
even though we all have the ability to formulate musical thoughts by ourselves.
References:
Brown, S. (2000). ”The ‘Musilanguage’ Model of Music Evolution.” In Wallin, N.L., Merker, B., &
Brown, S. (Eds.), The Origin of Music (pp. 271-300).. Cambridge: MIT press.
Cheney, D.L., & Seyfarth, R.M. (1990). How Monkeys See the World. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Christensen-Dalsgaard, J. (2004) ”Music and the Origin of Speeches.” Journal of Music and
Meaning 2,2
Cooke, D. (1959). The Language of Music, repr. 2001. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dissanayake, E. (2000). ”Antecedents of the Temporal Arts in Early Mother-Infant Interaction.” In
Wallin, N.L., Merker, B., & Brown, S. (Eds.), op. cit. (pp. 389-410).
Fitch, T. (2000). “The Evolution of Speech: A Comparative Review.” Trends in the Cognitive
Sciences 4: 258-267.
Mattheson, J. (1739) Der Volkommene Capelmeister. Hamburg: Christian Herold.
Miller, G. (2000). ”Evolution of Human Music through Sexual Selection.” In Wallin, N.L., Merker,
B., & Brown, S. (Eds.), op. cit. (pp. 329-360).
Peretz, I. (2002). ”Brain Specializations for Music.” The Neuroscientist 8:374-382
Pinker, S. (1997). How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton.
Trevarthen, C. (1979). ”Communication and Cooperation in Early Infancy: A Description of
Primary Intersubjectivity.” In M. Bullowa (Ed.), Before speech: The Beginning of Human
communication (pp. 321-347). London: Cambridge University Press.
Zatorre, R.J., Belin, P., Penhune, V.B. (2002). ”Structure and Function of Auditory Cortex: Music
and Speech.” Trends in the Cognitive Sciences 6: 37-45