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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 134: MAR-APR 2001 |
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What Sang First?
We have learned recently that the Neanderthals manufactured bone flutes as far back at 53,000 years. They may not have been able to speak to one another in words, but they had the language of music. Their music, and ours, may have been entrained in genes inherited from nonhominid ancestors that lived 60 million years ago, but which have been suppressed in primates until Neanderthals and modern humans came along. You may wonder where this argument is taking you. It goes back at least 60 million years to when the cetacea (whales and dolphins) split off from the evolutionary track leading to humans. It may even go back farther to when birds split away from the reptilian line. The music of birds and whales incorporate some of the complexity and sophistication of Beethoven's Fifth. The genes that have led to such musical talents may be ancient indeed, as speculated in the Science article under review. The authors go so far as to ask:
Do musical sounds in nature reveal a profound bond between all living things?
Such profundity requires some factual support, and the Science article compares human and whale music in some detail.
- Humpback rhythms are similar to ours.
- Humpbacks use phases similar in length to human music. They also create themes out of the phrases.
- Whale songs have lengths between those of a human ballad and a symphony movement, suggesting a similar attention span.
- Some whale songs are similar in structure to human compositions.
- The tone and timbre of many whale notes are similar to human musical sounds.
- Humpback songs contain repeating phrases that form rhymes, again this is similar to human music.
The list paraphrased in part above, in which the word "similar" is repeated again and again, is longer ; but the point is adequately made that the genes that lead to whale music may be the same ones we have inherited but which are only now being expressed.
(Gray, Patricia M. , et al; "The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music ," Science, 291:52, 2001.)
Comment. Many questions arise after reading the above article. Two will have to suffice here. First, music is so complex, sophisticated, and packed with information compared to the grunts and squeaks that suffice for many animals that we have to ask : What evolutionary imperatives required its emergence? Second, and equivalently, why and how did humans, whales, and birds evolve the diverse, specialized physiological apparatuses that produce music?
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