The singing neanderthal

A few reports on the books read during the summer. I begin with the beautiful "The Singing Neanderthal" by Steven Mithen (2005). Subtitle: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body.

Mithen, a British archaeologist, starts from an assumption: the propensity to make music is one of the most mysterious, fascinating, and at the same time overlooked distinctive traits of the human race. Scientific literature has undervalued this field of study, defining music as a technology, a product, created solely for play and recreation, and not as a selective adaptation. Conversely, Mithen argues that the study of the origins of language, and more generally of our ancestors' communicative ability, should be reevaluated in light of the musical aspect, which in turn cannot ignore the evolution of the body and mind.

This is an idea that many musicians find intuitively true, but which until now had not been supported by scientific literature and research. But Mithen's hypothesis goes further. Quoting Giuseppe Mirabella's review in Le Scienze (April 2007):

Music is a fundamental element of all human cultures. Musical instruments, songs, and ritual dances are part of all societies, from modern to the most primitive. And the widespread diffusion of musical ability has led to the hypothesis that this ability had an evolutionary role. But what selective advantage might music have offered our ancestors? Steven Mithen, a cognitive archaeologist at the University of Reading, attempts to formulate a very captivating theory, according to which early hominids communicated through a musical language, a blend of language and music as we understand them today. According to Mithen, this form of communication would have reached its peak in Neanderthals, who had an upper respiratory tract configuration that would have allowed them to speak, but lacked the neural circuits required to control language. The difficult environmental conditions in which they lived and the increasing complexity of their social groups required a continuous exchange of information, and thus a complex communication system developed that included both sounds and body gestures.

To define the Neanderthal communication system, Mithen coined the acronym "Hmmmm," for holistic-mimetical-musical-multi-modal (I greatly envy English's ease with acronyms):

"Its essence would have been a large number of holistic utterances, each functioning as a complete message in itself rather than as words that could be combined to generate new meanings."

The earliest Homo sapiens probably also communicated in this way, but the development of their brains allowed them to evolve a true language equipped with a grammar—that is, a system for combining basic symbols to form new meanings. Mithen's hypothesis is necessarily speculative, but the indirect evidence he brings to support it is numerous and convincing.

Please note: The book is indeed fascinating, but not very easy. It is a scientific treatise that must take into consideration, report, and evaluate the research and experiments conducted to date. Consequently, at times, it is not conversational and fluent. Highly recommended for those with a particular interest in this topic.

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