Specifically,ultrasonic calls emitted by young mice were recognized by
their mothers’ left hemisphere and evoked maternal caring (e.g.,retriev-
ing a lost pup to the nest).Clearly,there should be a strong selective
advantage for these mothers,that is,more of their offspring will survive.
In a polygynous species of another small rodent,the meadow vole,
males have enhanced visuospatial skills that apparently benefit them
during mating season when they travel in search of mates (Gaulin and
FitzGerald 1989).Similarly,male songbirds use lateralized singing to
attract mates (Slater,this volume),thus increasing their reproductive
fitness.These findings are suggestive in light of men’s relatively greater
lateralization for both singing and visuospatial skills,and women’s rela-
tively enhanced language and social skills.Limited as they are,these and
other data (Falk 1997) suggest that mammalian brain lateralization may
be rooted in different reproductive strategies for males (put energy
toward finding mates) and females (devote efforts to raising offspring).
It is not surprising,then,that aspects of language,music,singing,and visu-
ospatial skills that evolved from a basic mammalian brain plan are lat-
eralized differently in brains of men and women.It is even possible that
neurological substrates for these activities are wired differently because
the two sexes continued to depend on different reproductive strategies
during the past five million years (Falk 1997) or even more recently
(Miller,this volume).
Which brings us to the question of when language and music origi-
nated.The answer depends in part on how one defines the two endeav-
ors.Returning to the African apes,one could almost argue that a chorus
of rising and falling pant-hoots,or pant-hooting accompanied by drum-
ming on trees,is tantamount to a kind of protosinging or protomusic.It
is more difficult to view ape vocalizations as representative of protolan-
guage,however,because of the lack of referential calls (Mitani 1996).
Clearly,apes are not capable of projecting chopped up bits of air from
their mouths (phonemes) that can be recombined in an infinite number
of meaningful utterances;their vocalizations manifest neither the seman-
ticity nor the productivity of human language.These limitations pre-
sumably also applied to the earliest hominids.If one asks when
humanlike as opposed to apelike music first appeared,the discussion
regarding the neurological bases of music and language outlined above,
as well as paleoneurological evidence from the hominid fossil record dis-
cussed below,have important implications for the answer.
Results from brain imaging studies may be interpreted as implying
that music and language are part of one large,vastly complicated,dis-
tributed neurological system for processing sound in the largest-brained
primate.Both systems use intonation and rhythm to convey emotions,
that is,affective semantics (Molino,this volume).Both rely on partly212 Dean Falk