members of a group.This is the same,a fortiori,for language as for music,
both of which are above all social activities.The Origins of Language and Music
Starting from this analysis of music,language,and related activities,I
propose the following hypothesis:music,language,dance,chant,poetry,
and pretend play all have a partly common origin.Among the neural
modules responsible for this activity,it would be necessary to give a
central place to one or more rhythmic modules,which come into play in
behaviors such as throwing and constructing and using tools.The neu-
rophysiologist William H.Calvin (1990) proposed that the prepara-
tion and organization of throwing movements is the source of a type of
general syntax,the capacity to combine elementary sequences freely,a
capacity that would come into play in language as much as in behavior.
It is not certain if this (or these) module(s) have a unique origin,and we
would prefer for our part to view them as operating as well,and perhaps
rather than,in music and other collective activities as in technical oper-
ations such as throwing.The important thing is that they should have
contributed in a decisive manner to the development of the following
capacities: muscular and neural control of body movements, in
particular the hand,and,in the case of the rhythmic organization of
vocalizations,movements of the face and larynx,all of which are largely
controlled at the level of the cerebral cortex.These modules would thus
have major importance in the construction of speech rhythms and,in par-
ticular,syllable formation,the central point of phonetic articulation.In
a general sense,this mastery of rhythm is the only imaginable route of
access for the temporal organization of all activities:it is in this way that
rhythmic modules are at the foundation of all types of syntactic
constructions.
In our impending approach toward origins we must provide an essen-
tial place for another family of elementary behaviors,imitation.Special-
ists in child psychology have for a long time focused on the role of
imitation in human ontogeny (e.g.,Wallon 1942;Piaget 1945),and one
could even characterize the human species by this capacity:it is for this
reason that Meltzoff (1988) spoke of Homo imitans,which would take
the place of the traditional Homo faber.We see here again a certain con-
tinuity between human and animal,since it seems that chimpanzees,for
example,are capable of imitative behavior (Boesch 1993).But imitation
is a rather vague term that covers a diversity of behaviors having differ-
ent degrees of complexity.One could distinguish a first degree of com-
plexity,mimicry,which arises from the domain of reflex;a second degree173 Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Music and Language