In a recent article in The Financial Times, Michael Spitzer makes this fascinating claim:
“I would contend that music is perhaps the most mportant thing we (human beings) ever did, if primarily for the simple reason that music evolved before language—in fact, a million years earlier.”
To support this claim, Spitzer daws on evidence that human beings moved rhythmically millions of years ago, engaged in rhythmic activities (like carving stone tools, foraging for plants, making tracks) over a million years ago, created a variety of sounds 700,000 years ago, and were creating and playing flutes at least 40,000 years ago.
Of course, it’s intriguing in its own right that the origins of music go so far back in pre-history. But I’m interested in this claim for another reason. One of the main assumptions of the theory of multiple intelligences is that the various intelligences have different evolutionary histories and, accordingly, different cortical representation. If correct, Spitzer’s claim refutes the widespread belief that musical and linguistic capacities are closely allied, or even that human music piggy backs on human language (a claim that would be surprising to song birds!)
The article “The singing ape: how music made us human” is available at: www.ft.com/content/523b245c-d818-4921-b795-2b81f4bd44ba).
Photo by Spencer Imbrockon Unsplash