5
IS MUSIC AN
EVOLUTIONARY
ADAPTATION?
Abstract
In contemplating the function and origin of music, a number of scholars have considered whether
music might be an evolutionary adaptation. This article reviews the basic arguments related to evolu-
tionary claims for music. Although evolutionary theories about music remain wholly speculative,
musical behaviours satisfy a number of basic conditions, which suggest that there is indeed merit in
pursuing possible evolutionary accounts.
Keywords:Evolutionary theories of music; Music industry; Evolutionary origin of language;
Music and social bonding; Oxytocin; Mood regulation
Addressing the question of music’s origins has a long history and is patently speculative.
Although several cultures have provided colourful stories describing how people acquired
the capacity for music, most contemporary scholars have focused on possible psychologi-
cal, social, and cultural beginnings. In this chapter, I propose to offer a social account of
music’s origins that is explicitly linked to one of the most successful theories yet devised:
the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Evolution is often thought of in purely physiological rather than psychological terms.1–5
It is not simply that evolution has shaped immune systems, digestive tracts, and knee caps.
Evolution has also shaped our attitudes, dispositions, emotions, perceptions, and cognitive
functions. Some of our deepest convictions can be traced to plausible evolutionary origins:
we love life, we fear death, and we nurture our children because these dispositions better
ensure the propagation of our genes.
The theory of evolution by natural selection is a distal theory. It is not a theory that
explains specific behaviours, such as why you chose to cook ravioli for dinner last night, or
why you parked in a particular parking spot this morning. Similarly, if music is an evolu-
tionary adaptation, this will not allow us to account for particular musical acts, such as
Mendelssohn’s writing of the Scottish Symphony. Evolution proceeds by selecting traits that
are adaptive to an organism’s environment. For example, evolution did not ‘originate’ or
‘create’ the phenomenon of altruism. Instead, given a certain environment, natural selection