Science Journal: Caveman Crooners May Have Aided Early Human Life

Post Gazette ^ | 3-31-2006 | Sharon Begley

[blam]

Science Journal: Caveman crooners may have aided early human life

Friday, March 31, 2006

By Sharon Begley, The Wall Street Journal

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."

Some scientists today share that view. "Music was shaped by sexual selection to function mostly as a courtship display," Geoffrey Miller, of the University of New Mexico, argued in a 2001 paper.
But like Darwin, he bases that conclusion on the belief that music has "no identifiable survival benefits." If a trait doesn't help creatures survive, then it can persist generation after generation only if it helps them reproduce.

Studies in neuroscience and anthropology, however...

[CobaltBlue]

My theory is that one of the most important advances in civilization was when humans developed the ability to keep older people alive so they could pass on more learning. Not to mention watch the babies while the younger people gathered food.

[vrtom]

....The skin would not catch fire with the heat because it would be cooked by the water.....

Doesn't it seem likely that the word cooked in this sentence is a typo, and the intended word was cooled?

[SunkenCiv]

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[hosepipe]

[ 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 ]

I see they were RAPPERS...
"its hard out there for the pIMp"... no matter whats being pimped..

[eddie willers]

First ballad:

He rides thru the jungle tearin' limbs offa trees (Alley Oop, oop, oop-oop)
Knockin' great big monstahs dead on their knees (Alley Oop, oop, oop-oop)
The cats don't bug him cuz they know bettah (Alley Oop, oop, oop-oop)
Cuz he's a mean motah scootah and a bad go-gettah (Alley Oop, oop, oop-oop)
(Alley Oop) He's the toughest man there is alive
(Alley Oop) Wearin' clothes from a wildcat's hide
(Alley Oop) He's the king of the jungle jive
(Look at that cave man go!!)

[SunkenCiv]