Nikolsky Aleksey, Benítez-Burraco Antonio
Independent Researcher, Austin, TX, United States.
Department of Spanish, Linguistics and Literary Theory (Linguistics), Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, Spain.
Phys Life Rev. 2024 Dec;51:114-228. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2023.11.016. Epub 2023 Dec 28.
Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. Following the lead of evolutionary linguistic research, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the theory of self-domestication, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to mammal domestication, triggered by a progressive reduction in reactive aggression levels in response to environmental changes. In the paper, we specifically argue that changes in aggression management through the course of human cultural evolution can account for the behaviors conducive to the emergence and evolution of music. We hypothesize 4 stages in the evolutionary development of music under the influence of environmental changes and evolution of social organization: starting from musilanguage, 1) proto-music gave rise to 2) personal and private forms of timbre-oriented music, then to 3) small-group ensembles of pitch-oriented music, at first of indefinite and then definite pitch, and finally to 4) collective (tonal) music. These stages parallel what has been hypothesized for languages and encompass the diversity of music types and genres described worldwide. Overall, music complexity emerges in a gradual fashion under the effects of enhanced abilities for cultural niche construction, resulting from the stable trend of reduction in reactive aggression towards the end of the Pleistocene, leading to the rise of hospitality codes, and succeeded by the increase in proactive aggression from the beginning of the Holocene onward. This paper addresses numerous controversies in the literature on the evolution of music by providing a clear structural definition of music, identifying its structural features that distinguish it from oral language, and summarizing the typology of operational functions of music and formats of its transmission. The proposed framework of structural approach to music arms a researcher with means to identify and comparatively analyze different schemes of tonal organization of music, placing them in the context of human social and cultural evolution. Especially valuable is the theory of so-called "personal song", described and analyzed here from ethological, social, cultural, cognitive, and musicological perspectives. Personal song seems to constitute a remnant of the proto-musical transition from animal communication to human music as we know it today. We interlink the emergence of personal song with the evolution of kinship, placing both of them on the timeline of cultural evolution - based on totality of ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and paleoclimatic data.
音乐或许与语言一样，是人类最具特色的行为特征。循着进化语言学研究的思路，人们提出了不同假说，以解释为何只有人类能够演奏音乐，以及这种能力在人类物种中是如何演化的。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的音乐进化模型，该模型基于自我驯化理论。根据这一理论，人类的表型至少部分是一个类似于哺乳动物驯化过程的结果，这个过程是由对环境变化做出反应时反应性攻击水平的逐渐降低所引发的。在本文中，我们特别指出，在人类文化进化过程中，攻击管理方式的变化可以解释那些有利于音乐出现和进化的行为。我们假设在环境变化和社会组织进化的影响下，音乐进化发展有四个阶段：从音乐语言开始，1）原始音乐产生了2）以音色为导向的个人和私人形式的音乐，然后发展到3）以音高为导向的小型群体合奏音乐，起初音高不确定，后来音高确定，最后发展到4）集体（调性）音乐。这些阶段与语言的假设阶段并行，涵盖了世界各地所描述的音乐类型和体裁的多样性。总体而言，在文化生态位构建能力增强的影响下，音乐复杂性以渐进的方式出现。这种能力增强是由于在更新世末期反应性攻击减少的稳定趋势导致好客规范的兴起，随后从全新世开始主动性攻击增加。本文通过对音乐给出清晰的结构定义、识别其与口头语言相区别的结构特征，以及总结音乐的操作功能类型及其传播形式，解决了音乐进化文献中的众多争议。所提出的音乐结构方法框架为研究人员提供了手段，用以识别和比较分析音乐的不同调性组织方案，并将它们置于人类社会和文化进化的背景中。特别有价值的是所谓“个人歌曲”的理论，本文从行为学、社会、文化、认知和音乐学的角度对其进行了描述和分析。个人歌曲似乎构成了从动物交流到我们今天所知的人类音乐的原始音乐过渡的残余。我们将个人歌曲的出现与亲属关系的进化联系起来，基于人种志、考古学、人类学、遗传学和古气候数据的总体情况，将它们置于文化进化的时间线上。
