Music is a big part of our culture. Headphones, for example, give me an excellent excuse to ignore people. However, it's very difficult to study why music evolved because it leaves behind so little. Art results in cave paintings, language leaves its mark on our brains...but music? Aside from a handful of ancient flutes ( which might not even be flutes) there's very little prehistoric evidence for it. Establishing why it evolved - or even that it was actually influenced by evolution - is tricky. However, a huge new cross-cultural study may shed light on this fascinating topic.
The research examined music from more than 300 groups spread around the world. From Pacific islanders to Germans and everywhere in between. Or at least, 299 other places in between. The resulting 300 or so tracks selected from these groups were then subjected to a battery of statistical tests. It was hoped that this would identify some universal characteristics about all these songs. This, in turn would shed light on why music evolved. For example, finding a common religious theme might indicate that rituals played a key part in its development.
Now, those of you with a keen scientific eye might have already spotted some problems with this approach. For starters each genre/culture typically only had one song analysed. So, 300 groups might seem like a huge sample, but the worlds' music library is huge-er. There's also the fact they're kind of working backwards. After thousands of years of development music has these traits, that doesn't tell us why music evolved in the first place.
However, all of these criticisms are rather moot since the researchers didn't actually find any universal traits in the music analysed. Sylabic singing, dancing, loud volume....all were common but still far from universal.
That said, they did find some aspects of music that were present in all the regions they examined. These might not have been universal, but they were so widespread the researchers found them interesting. And in terms of trying to understand why music evolved, one was very interesting indeed: music is very social. The authors of the research take this to indicate the driving force behind the evolution of music may have been its use as a bonding exercise.
And that does seem very reasonable. Many other aspects of our evolution have been driven by that same factor. Like our brains and maybe language. The widespread nature of social music is certainly eye catching as well. Whilst I'm unwilling to commit fully to the idea on account of the previously mentioned problems, with a bit more refined research this could well help us solve the riddle of song.
Reference
Savage, P. E., Brown, S., Sakai, E., & Currie, T. E. (2015). Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201414495.
