Music as a coevolved system for social bonding

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/qp3st
• Publication Date: 2020-07-15T15:01:16Z
• Authors: Patrick E. Savage; Psyche Loui; Bronwyn Tarr; Adena Schachner; Luke Glowacki; Steven Mithen; Tecumseh Fitch
• Keywords: Musicality; Coevolution

Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution musicality have focused mainly on value music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function unifies all these theories, enabled at larger scales than grooming other mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archaeology, anthropology, biology, musicology, psychology, neuroscience into a unified framework accounts biological cultural music. involves gene-culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors initially arose spread inventions had feedback effects due to their impact bonding. emphasize deep links between production, perception, prediction, reward arising repetition, synchronization, harmonization rhythms pitches, summarize empirical levels brain networks, physiological mechanisms, across cultures species. Finally, address potential criticisms testable predictions future research, including neurobiological bases relationships human music, language, animal song, domains. The (MSB) hypothesis provides most comprehensive theory date