The music piped in from speakers fades, stage lights go down. Tension builds to a fever-pitch in every one of the ~700 people in attendance, as pulsating rhythms are beaten on traditional Brazilian instruments. Low-tuned guitars and bass add themselves into the mix with a chainsaw fury. Musicians stalk the stage like hyenas. The famously rowdy Glaswegian crowd is reaching critical mass. With the frontman in position, arms raised in invocation, the potential energy is released. The guttural roar forming the lyrics to “Back to the Primitive” is unleashed from behind matted dreadlocks. Distorted bass and guitar following furiously beaten drums coalesce into a percussive assault that hits like artillery. On cue, the crowd detonates. The cacophony seems powerful enough to devastate the building, the people, and even the self —a concept which becomes meaningless in the gestalt of the crowd. Huge swathes of individuals join the frenzied melee of the mosh pit, a sacred space where ritualised violence follows the tempo and intensity of the music with perfect synchronicity. I am 8 years old and become transfixed by the crowd, its relationship with the band and the visceral physical feeling it all produced. Every second of that gig is burned into my mind as a formative experience, the nucleus of my relationship with music and culture. Eventually, it led me to the world of Human Evolution.
Infinite variations of this experience have played out for almost every human alive and that has lived for hundreds-of-thousands of years. Some interaction with music in its full socio-cultural context helped to shape their understanding of their world, their place in it and the traditions and rituals associated with it. Music and its unique properties hold a special place in the formation of a person’s sense of self and the way they navigate interactions with others in their culture.
Music and its unique properties hold a special place in the formation of a person’s sense of self and the way they navigate interactions with others in their culture.
Music, as every part of the human experience, is the result of a long and complex evolutionary process. It is a vital social and personal technology. A culturally and technologically derived way to deal with complex emotions, negotiate social life, structure identity and even learn basic cognitive skills. Music allows you to quite literally lose your Self. While “in the flow,” a group of musicians create what Ian Cross calls a state of “floating intentionality”; our own individual desires/goals are subsumed by a collective set derived from musical style/culture, be it jazz or death metal. As they play, they are one entity.
Neurocognitive research into instrumental music’s effect suggests that aspects of musical “grammar” activate areas of the brain associated with processing both meaning and emotional content. Though we may not be consciously aware of it, we can extract complex information from music as we do with language. Studies on small samples of contemporary people can help describe the phenomenon, but how did it get to be and when? I mentioned, casually, that music has been a part of human experience since time immemorial, and there is increasing evidence that this is true.
Neurocognitive research into instrumental music’s effect suggests that aspects of musical “grammar” activate areas of the brain associated with processing both meaning and emotional content.
Master crafted pipes belonging to sophisticated musical traditions exist across the European Upper Paleolithic. Work on the controversial “Divje Babe” artefact increasingly points to it being an instrument made by Neanderthals. Palaeolithic pipes show the use of pentatonic scales, decorations and a complexity of construction that seem to suggest generations of development. Beyond this, the timeline becomes more nebulous. While Chimpanzees give us a baseline expectation of the kinds of socialised noise early hominins may have made, the story is far from clear. What is known is that music is something hominins developed over millions of years.
Firstly, the anatomy relating to vocal production and perception, i.e. the throat, ear and auditory cortex, experienced significant change within the Australopiths, some of the earliest hominins associated with tool use. They could create and perceive complex sounds compared to Chimps. Anton Killin, who studies walking rhythms, suggests that Australopiths could synchronise to the movements of others, a critical skill for anyone wanting to play together or move a large rock/carcass. Furthermore, research on Oldowan stone tools has revealed complexities in the practical skills and socialised learning necessary that suggest a cognitively demanding social/technical life. Based on this and more, the paleoanthropologist Sara Wurz puts the beginning of our musical journey at >2 million years ago. My personal question, as a drummer and a stone toolmaker, is: when did objects start to be made and used for their sounds, and what form did they take?
Master crafted pipes belonging to sophisticated musical traditions exist across the European Upper Paleolithic. Work on the controversial “Divje Babe” artefact increasingly points to it being an instrument made by Neanderthals.
At its core, stone tool making is percussive and noisy. Hit rock, make tool. A distinctive sound is produced which all knappers recognise. This reflects the way force is transmitted and is a proxy for the quality of the material or the skill of the maker. Lower quality materials transmit force unevenly leading to unpredictable outcomes and an unsatisfying “clunk” when struck. Each strike produces a corresponding sound, a clear tone for success or a dull thump for failure. Thus, there is a link between one’s ability to strike a rock and the properties of the sound: a good strike makes a good sound. The work of Ian Cross and Elisabeth Blake showed that percussing flint blades produces sound perceived as being musical to a greater or lesser degree. This perception of musicality corresponded to how “useful” the blade was, i.e. long, thin and with lots of cutting edge. My own research seeks to develop this further, designing experiments to test just how important sound is to the act of knapping during learning and making.
Research into the origins of art suggest that common materials like the mineral pigment ochre or sea-shells were the mediums for the first abstract forays into visual creativity. Similarly, the everyday sounds of making stone tools could be a way for hominins to create new associations between sound from objects and social life. Eventually, the act of hitting a rock becomes a way for hominins to develop a quasi-musical social practice, one centred around noise made by striking objects together, a drum through a rock. Stone tools and their acoustic properties may be one component in the constellation of processes that led hominins to the vast array of music created today.
For 3 million years, hominins were producing loud noise by striking objects; this noise contained information, information that could help them accomplish their goals. Hominins that attended to this noise would come to associate these sounds with positive outcomes, good social interactions, or useful tools. Every scatter of flakes could represent dozens of small sounds striking a spark in the early auditory cortex. These sparks may have created associations between stimuli and their response that evolved into something new. Something that hundreds-of-thousands, perhaps millions, of years later would have a crowd in Glasgow losing themselves in a mosh pit to the sound of Soulfly.
Eventually, the act of hitting a rock becomes a way for hominins to develop a quasi-musical social practice, one centred around noise made by striking objects together, a drum through a rock.
Is a drummer, stone tool maker and currently a PhD student at Durham university, focussing on the early evolution of musical behaviour. His work uses experimental archaeology and stone tools to explore the behavioural and acoustic landscapes of early hominins, hopefully revealing insights into the development of musical instruments.
Excellent article. Thanks for sharing.