The origins of music as an adaptive trait in humans

Abstract

Throughout human history, people have developed the faculty to appreciate and create music. Musical thinking implies the development of cognitive and emotional faculties by complex neural processes. How could such a complex behavior as music be originated by evolution? This article reviews the main evolutionary approaches that have been proposed to explain this process. The main hypotheses state that music has emerged from adaptive processes such as communication and emotional coordination between mother and infant, the conformation of large cohesive groups, mate selection or the development of cognitive and emotional flexibility through play. Natural selection could have enabled the establishment of this faculty, whereas cultural evolution and gene-culture interaction could have led to the establishment of music as we know it.