Caveman crooners may have aided early human life

[IChing]

In Steven Mithen's imagination, the small band of Neanderthals gathered 50,000 years ago around the caves of Le Moustier, in what is now the Dordogne region of France, were butchering carcasses, scraping skins, shaping ax heads -- and singing.

One of the fur-clad men started it, a rhythmic sound with rising and falling pitch, and others picked it up, indicating their willingness to cooperate both in the moment and in the future, when the group would have to hunt or fend off predators. The music promoted "a sense of we-ness, of being together in the same situation facing the same problems," suggests Prof. Mithen, an archaeologist at England's Reading University. Music, he says, creates "a social rather than a merely individual identity." And that may solve a longstanding mystery.

Music gives biologists fits. Its ubiquity in human cultures, and strong evidence that the brain comes preloaded with musical circuits, suggest that music is as much a product of human evolution as, say, thumbs. But that raises the question of what music is for. Back in 1871, Darwin speculated that human music, like bird songs, attracts mates. Or, as he put it, prelinguistic human ancestors tried "to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm."


>>>>snip http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06090/678467-115.stm

[Trevelyan]

1. I read all of the available Clan of the Cave Bear series for the first

time about two years ago and loved it. Though the reviews were excellent for the first book did not think I would enjoy but had to buy all of them after read one when they were all reissued with the publication of Jean Auel's last book and she has some interesting scenes on caveman music.

A lot of helpful hints on survival in this series. We may all be living in caves the way bushco is going and the passages on hunting and gathering food and medicinal herbs may come in hand!!!

Someone mentioned The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight when someone started a thread on self-sufficiency communes.

Will have to check out Steven Mithen's work.

[IChing]

3. Tonal harmonize may sound like something Pythagorus would say

Universe has tonal qualities that are never expressed in language but the music of
the spheres.

Music is a universal expression of mankind
which unites us all.

[kineneb]

17. Boethius' musica mundana

or Music of the Spheres, the mathmatical relationships of the planets while moving through space.

Musica humana- the internal music of the human body

Musica instrumentalis- vocal and instrumental music



"The word music had a much wider meaning to the Greeks than it has to us. In the teachings of Pythagoras and his followers, music was inseparable from mumbers, which were thought to be the key to the entire spiritual and physical universe. So the system of musical sounds and rhythms, being ordered by numbers, exemplified the harmony of the cosmos and corresponded to it. The doctrine was thoroughly and systematically explained by Plato in the Timaeus, the most widely know of his dialogs in the Middle Ages, and in his Republic. Plato's views on the nature and uses of music profoundly influenced medieaval and Renaissance speculations abourt music and its place in education."
-A History of Western Music, Grout & Palisca, 6th ed. p. 5

Claudius Ptollemy also related music to astronomy.


...music history geek mode /off...

[darkmaestro019]

4. you might like

a slightly trashier sort of series along the same general lines by William Sarabande, if you enjoy that ambience (I do) I wish I could remember names in order, but one is called Beyond The Sea of Ice and the other titles are in the same format. It's lower brow than Auel but enjoyable as pure entertainment and does seem to be carefully researched.

Jean Auel drove me insane with the "Ayla invented everything ever!" thing, but I forgave her, because for many many hours she took me away from here and put me there. Still, when I close a pre-history "Indian" book it makes me very sad, the trashy ugly mess we're surrounded with, contrasted with the pristine Earth I've just been visiting. (sigh)

EDIT: Last time I tried to hunt the Sarabande down they seemed out of print--they're paperback "trash" books, I guess, lol, but if you stumble into any in a used bookshop or a friend's shelf, you might crack one for a few hours of vacation from here. : )

[Lochloosa]

12. Alibris.com has them....link below

http://www.alibris.com/search/search.cfm

[darkmaestro019]

24. Thanks : )

Pretty sure I could find them on Amazon, etc, too--but we have serious issues getting mail here, and I do try to keep money local when I can. Still, that's a nifty place to add to my when-you-do-get-to-shop for luxuries list. : )

[hedgehog]

19. What I always wondered about the Children of the Earth Series

Jean Auel so carefully researched and documented everything like what they ate, what they wore, how they hunted and built shelters etc. How did she get all the details for the (ahem) "hot" scenes? I mean, were there special wear patterns on the stone floors of the caves or what?

[ronnie624]

13. If you like this genre

you might also try Animal Wife by Elizabeth Thomas Marshal. The author has a background in anthropology and her books are well written and enjoyable.

I read The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Valley of the Horses as well and found both very hard to put down.

[Vexatious Ape]

2. We did not come from Neanderthals

In our family tree--they are more like our cousins. Neanderthals did not begat modern humans. Maybe Bush came from the Neanderthals but not you and me.

[mdelaguna2000]

5. lol.

[VegasWolf]

16. Exactly! We all know homo neanderthalis evolved into homo klingionus.

And we all know how Klingons love to sing!!!

:beer:
:toast:

[Judi Lynn]

18. Don't we, though!

[dbt]

6. Raising the question of what Music is for?

I wish the Scientific Community a lot of luck in that analysis. While they are busy dissecting and studying and postulating and doing their controlled experiments with brave volunteers wired up to EEG's and taking tissue samples, I will be in a field somewhere in County Clare, playing my fiddle and watching the girls dance!

:beer:
dbt
Remember New Orleans

[NashVegas]

7. Ding! Ding! Ding!

Music is where the rational (math) and the irrational (emotion) come together.

I suspect the article's author has it wrong in his suggestion it came from hunters doing their business, I think it's more likely that music and our use of it evolved from children - infants, even. Mothers hum and sing to soothe their children. Children hum and sing to attract positive attention from a parent.

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. Music is the language of the universe

I also play the fiddle - old time. One of the main draws for me is that I can go anywhere and play with/for anyone and it doesn't matter whether or not we speak the same language, we can still communicate and have a good time. Through music and sound you can connect with people in a way that is not possible otherwise.

[0007]

8. Aphasia patients that I've worked with that have lost the use of speech

due to a stroke, can sing the words to songs they once knew almost perfectly. Music is from the other side of the brain than speech.

[dipsydoodle]

21. That interests me.

My wife died as a result of a brain tumour 16 years when she was 45. The tumour was on the left hand side over the speech centre and the only symptom , aside obviously from a headache , was that she lost all of the nouns. After the first operation, when they had yet to return, she could still not say milk but we found that she could say leche We realised that her spanish, which she had learned as a second langauge, had remained intact. I concluded that second langauge speech cannot be stored in the speech centre. Was that a sound conclusion ? Subsequently a year later, by which time all of the nouns had returned anyway, she started switching pronouns - he for she etc and we realised it had returned and she dies a few months later.

[gkhouston]

23. yes, although it's an abstract language of its own

I knew a woman, now deceased, who was a professional musician. She told me that in her youth she had been recruited and trained to be one of the Eniac coders back in the early days of computing. The recruiters had come to the conclusion that a modest amount of musical ability was a better predictor of future programming skill than any other metric they possessed, including proficiency in algebra.

[CanSocDem]

9. more evidence...

http://www.greenwych.ca/fl-compl.htm

[shenmue]

10. Music makes people feel good

And allows them to express themselves. I wonder if it is related to birdsong.

[dipsydoodle]

11. Whole issue sounds iffy to me.

I've no concept of them doing anything other than maybe projecting their voices over long distnace to cope with terrain on which they lived.

But who knows - maybe they did sit around the fire at night playing Soldiers Joy on their primitive banjos. Would sure disprove the idea that the banjo came from Africa

[aquart]

14. And that would be important to you, why?

[dipsydoodle]

20. You mean the Africa bit I guess

This is a saga which is the matter of much debate. Please contact me direct if you wish to do so as it would be absurd for me go into this subject here. If you'd already looked at my profile you'll know I'm part of the banjo community even though I'm in the UK - I've got c. 150 of them.

[WhiteTara]

22. string theory states that all the universe is

a vibrating song. The cacophony of our planet must make the universe cry and sing mournful songs. Edited to add: And I'm running out and getting this book. Edited: Oh NO! there is no book. What a beautiful novel that would make...hmmm

[BiggJawn]

25. "Really, we had NO idea you guys were still around!"

"Yeah, well, maybe we'll sing you a sad song..."