The Prehistory of Music: Human Evolution, Archaeology, and the Origins of Musicality by Iain Morley PDF

2013 | Oxford University Press | ISBN: 9780199234080 | 3.73 MB | 464 Pages | PDF
Music is possessed by all human cultures, and archaeological evidence for musical activities pre-dates even the earliest-known cave art. Music has been the subject of keen investigation across a great diversity of fields, from neuroscience and psychology to ethnography, archaeology, and its own dedicated field, musicology. Despite the great contributions that these studies have made towards understanding musical behaviours, much remains mysterious about this ubiquitous human phenomenon — not least, its origins.

This book brings together evidence from these fields, and more, in investigating the evolutionary origins of our musical abilities, the nature of music, and the earliest archaeological evidence for musical activities amongst our ancestors. It seeks to understand the true relationship between our unique musical capabilities and the development of the remarkable social, emotional, and communicative abilities of our species.