Hominids' Cave Rave-Ups May Link Music And Speech

Reuters (UK) ^ | 5-31-2006 | Michael Roddy

[blam]

Hominids' cave rave-ups may link music and speech

Wed May 31, 2006 2:15 AM BST
By Michael Roddy

(Reuters) - It was a dark and stormy night, and in a cave in what is now southern France, Neanderthals were singing, dancing and tapping on stalagmites with their fingernails to pass the time.

Did this Ice-Age rave-up happen, perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, on a cold night in the Pleistocene Epoch? Or is it purely a figment of the imagination of Steven Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England?

Impossible to know, Mithen, 45, readily admits, but in his book, "The Singing Neanderthals," he has built a strong case that our hominid ancestors had a musical culture, and a rudimentary form of communication that went with it, that has left traces deeply embedded in modern mankind.

Why else, for example, would music have universal appeal and such a strong pull on the human psyche? Why, when we hear music, do we feel the need to tap our feet, or dance?

Why do we think some passages of music paint pictures, or instruments have "conversations" with each other? Why indeed.

In the book, published last year in Britain and this year in the United States, Mithen attempts to re-create -- against all odds -- a "soundscape" of pre-history and plug what he thinks is a huge gap in human knowledge -- the link between language and music.

"Obviously, I'm trying to address a sort of impossible topic. I mean, how stupid for an archaeologist to write about music because you can't hear anything in the past," Mithen, who is also involved in more conventional projects like digs in Scotland, said in an interview at his university office.

AS MANY SOURCES AS POSSIBLE Continued...

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[davisfh]

"Or is it purely a figment of the imagination of Steven Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England?"

I think that you've nailed it, Michael.

[Red Badger]

The Singing Neanderthals...........Mick Jagger's ancestors?.......

[D-fendr]

I'd be more surprised if pre-historic man didn't have some form of music.

Is there any record in history of a society of humans that didn't?

It isn't any stranger to me than prehistoric art.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam. Another "I hear singing and there's no one there" topic. :')

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

Neanderthals Sang Like Sopranos
ABC Science News | 3-15-2005 | Jennifer Viegas
Posted on 03/15/2005 8:34:39 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1363597/posts

High notes of the singing Neanderthals
http://www.timesonline.co.uk | 01/30/05 | Jonathan Leake
Posted on 01/30/2005 9:25:53 PM EST by K4Harty
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1332270/posts

Neanderthal Flute
Bob Fink | updated March 1998 | Bob Fink
Posted on 09/12/2005 12:12:33 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1482622/posts

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

something for your ping list?

[SunkenCiv]

High notes of the singing Neanderthals
http://www.timesonline.co.uk | 01/30/05 | Jonathan Leake
Posted on 01/30/2005 9:25:53 PM EST by K4Harty
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1332270/posts

Neanderthals Sang Like Sopranos
ABC Science News | 3-15-2005 | Jennifer Viegas
Posted on 03/15/2005 8:34:39 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1363597/posts

[SunkenCiv]

just an update to a cool topic:

The Singing Neanderthals
by Steven Mithen
reviewed by Brian Lynch

The Singing Neanderthals theorizes, for example, that in the millennia before the emergence of anything like words or grammar, language and music were one and the same, consisting of tonal utterances that allowed the earliest humans to communicate. Even now, Mithen says, we hear echoes of that musical proto-language whenever we follow the universal impulse to speak to infants in a singsong voice. (Versions of this impulse have even been detected in the willingness of Chinese-speaking parents to alter the important tonal qualities that are built in to all Chinese dialects.)

[SunkenCiv]

---

The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body by Steven Mithen paperback

---

[RightWhale]

Music is poetry; poetry is music. Poetry is how they passed down the old stories before writing existed since poetry has rhythm and meter and is easier to remember and harder to get it wrong and forget or change important stuff.

[Dustbunny]

I love this guys imagination.

[ASA Vet]

Imagination (abstract thinking) is an ability which separates us from our nonhuman ancestors.

[tomzz]

Gorillas and chimps can be taught to communicate using deaf signing conventions but they cannot be taught to speak English, and that's because they do not have voluntary control over breathing likie we do. Koko, the first gorilla taught to sign, is said to have an understood vocabulary of thousands of English words and understands English speech, but she cannot speak it. The same could easily have been true of neanderthals.

Modern humans have voluntary control over breathing since we apparently originated in water, and control over breathing is a necessary adaptation for swimming.

[Graymatter]

Koko, the first gorilla taught to sign, is said to have an understood vocabulary of thousands of English words

Way more than one needs. Unless one is a gorilla.

[tomzz]

She's said to have an IQ in the area of about a hundred.

[Graymatter]

She's said to have an IQ in the area of about a hundred.

That too is way more than one needs. Unless one is a gorilla. :)

[dirtboy]

It was a dark and stormy night, and in a cave in what is now southern France, Neanderthals were singing, dancing and tapping on stalagmites with their fingernails to pass the time.

Can't be worse than most of the hypersexual crap that passes for music nowadays. We evolved from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, but a certain element of our population seems to want to devolve to Homo priapism.

[Caramelgal]

You are right, music is easier to remember. It makes me think about the ABC’s. I can recite the ABC’s without singing the song I learned as a child but I still hear it even as I “say” the letters.

I cannot recite the lyrics of the Star Bangled Banner but I can sing it, albeit off key :).

And speech has tonality, without it it’s flat and monotone and emotionless. Think of the early generation of computer generated speech, you can understand the words spoken but it certainly doesn’t sound human. Language without inflection, no matter how rudimentary, doesn’t convey anything but cold fact and even then it looses meaning in translation.

Isn’t music in some ways just an extension and exaggeration of speech?