the singing neanderthals

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The Singing Neanderthals:

the Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Bodyby Steven Mithen

London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2005.ISBN 0-297-64317-7 hardback 20.00, US$25.92; ix+374 pp.

Why are humans musical? Why do people in all cultures singor play instruments? Why do we appear to have specializedneurological apparatus for hearing and interpreting musicas distinct from other sounds? And how does our musicality

relate to language and to our evolutionary history?

Anthropologists and archaeologists have paid little attentionto the origin of music and musicality far less than foreither language or art. While art has been seen as an indexof cognitive complexity and language as an essential tool ofcommunication, music has suffered from our perception thatit is an epiphenomenal leisure activity, and archaeologicallyinaccessible to boot. Nothing could be further from the truth,according to Steven Mithen; music is integral to human

social life, he argues, and we can investigate its ancestrywith the same rich range of analyses neurological,physiological, ethnographic, linguistic, ethological and even

archaeological which have been deployed to study language.

In The Singing Neanderthals Steven Mithen poses these questions and proposes a boldhypothesis to answer them. Mithen argues that musicality is a fundamental part of beinghuman, that this capacity is of great antiquity, and that a holistic protolanguage of musicalemotive expression predates language and was an essential precursor to it.

This is an argument with implications which extend far beyond the mere origins of music

itself into the very motives of human origins. Any argument of such range is bound to attractdiscussion and critique; we here present commentaries by archaeologists Clive Gambleand Iain Morley and linguists Alison Wray and Maggie Tallerman, along with Mithensresponse to them. Whether right or wrong, Mithen has raised fascinating and importantissues. And it adds a great deal of charm to the time-honoured, perhaps shopworn imageof the Neanderthals shambling ineffectively through the pages of Pleistocene prehistory toimagine them humming, crooning or belting out a cappella harmonies as they went.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal16:1, 97112 2006 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Researchdoi:10.1017/S0959774306000060 Printed in the United Kingdom.


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Overview

Steven Mithen

While there has been considerable discussion and de-

bate within palaeoanthropology regarding the originand evolution of language and art, that of music anddance have been neglected. This is as surprising as it isunfortunate as these behaviours are universal amongsthuman communities today and in the historicallydocumented past. We cannot understand the originand nature ofHomo sapiens without addressing whyand how we are a musical species.

The Singing Neanderthals argues that while bothlanguage and art are most likely restricted to Homosapiens, musicality has a significantly earlier appear-ance in human evolution and was utilized by a widerange of hominin ancestors and relatives. Indeed, thefailure to appreciate this leaves us with a very restric-tive understanding of past communication methodsand lifestyles in general. Moreover, we remain con-strained in our understanding of how not only musicbut also language originated in modern humans. Toaddress these issues, The Singing Neanderthals drawson evidence and theories from a wide range of disci-plines including neuroscience, psychology, linguistics,musicology and palaeoanthropology. By building asynthesis of material from these fields it seeks to notonly understand how our capacities for language andmusic evolved but also to construct a more informed

understanding of the past.At present, there are two key approaches to theevolution of language with regard to the nature ofproto-language. One of these can be called compo-sitional and is especially associated with the workof Derek Bickerton and Ray Jackendoff. In essence,this argues that words came before grammar, and itis the evolution of syntax that differentiates the vocalcommunication system of Homo sapiens from all ofthose that went before. An alternative approach isthat developed by Alison Wray and Michael Arbib.They suggest that pre-modern communication wasconstituted by holistic phrases, each of which had a

unique meaning and which could not be broken downinto meaningful constituent parts. As such, discretewords that can be combined to make new and uniqueutterances were a relatively late development in theevolutionary process that led to language. I favour theholistic approach and envisage such phrases as alsomaking extensive use of variation in pitch, rhythmand melody to communicate information, expressemotion and induce emotion in other individuals. Assuch, both language and music have a common origin

in a communication system that I refer to as Hm-mmmm because it had the following characteristics:it was Holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musicaland mimetic (see Fig. 1).

Appreciating that human ancestors and relatives

had a sophisticated vocal communication system ofthis type helps to explain numerous features of thearchaeological and fossil record. The long-runningdebate about the linguistic capabilities of the Nean-derthals arises from apparently contradictory lines ofevidence that can now be resolved. That from theirskeletal remains suggests a capability for vocal com-munication similar to that of modern humans (andwhich has, therefore, been assumed to be language)while the archaeological evidence provides few, ifany, traces for linguistically mediated behaviour. Thisseeming paradox is resolved by appreciating that theNeanderthals did indeed have a complex vocal com-

munication system, but it was a type of Hmmmmmrather than language. Another type of Hmmmmmwas used by the immediate ancestors ofHomo sapiensin Africa, both having originated from a proto-Hm-mmmm used by a common ancestor.

The Singing Neanderthals examines and inter-prets the fossil and archaeological records to providea feasible scenario for how Hmmmmm would haveoriginated and evolved into a sufficiently complexcommunication system to support the culturalachievements of the Neanderthals and other large-brained hominins.

It begins by arguing that the vocalizations, ges-tures and body postures used by non-human primatestoday are most likely analogous to those used by earlyhominins during the Pliocene. The vocalizations ofapes and monkeys often have a musical nature tothem, heard most dramatically in the rhythmic chat-tering of geladas and the duets sung by pairedgibbons. Such non-human primate calls should bedescribed as holistic because they do not appear tobe composed out of discrete words with their ownindividual meanings and which can be recombinedto make novel utterances. The Singing Neanderthalsargues that the vocalizations of our Pliocene ancestors

would have been similar and these directly evolvedinto human language and music during the course ofhominin evolution.

With regard to evolution in the Plio-Pleistocene,the need for increased sociality arising from envi-ronmental and dietary change would have createdpressures for enhanced communication, this beingfacilitated by the evolution of partial bipedalism andchanges in the vocal tract. The evolution of full bipedal-ism by 1.6 mya would have provided further possibili-


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ties for both vocal communication andbody language, the latter arising fromthe new forms of muscle control thatwalking and running on two legs re-quires. Further selective pressures for

enhanced communication would havearisen from the demands to exchangeinformation about new environments,from changing life-history patterns,for mate attraction, for the planningof big game hunting and for the cul-tural transmission of technologicalknowledge. The Singing Neanderthalsexamines the fossil and archaeologicalevidence for each of these develop-ments and considers their implicationsfor the nature of hominin communica-tion and expression.

There is no reason to expect thatthese selective pressures and oppor-tunities for enhanced communicationwould have resulted in language aswe know it today a communica-tion system with grammatical rules tocompose a discrete number of wordsinto a potentially infinite numberof utterances. Moreover, there is noevidence for language-mediated be-haviour in the archaeological recordprior to several tens of thousands

of year safter the first fossil tracesof Homo sapiens in Africa. What weshould expect, however, is for the communicationsystems of our ancestors and relatives to have had adegree of musicality as a means to express and induceemotions and to develop group identities, the latterbeing essential for the high degree of cooperation re-quired by prehistoric communities. As Merlin Donaldhas previously argued, mimesis is likely to have beenimportant in these communication systems of large-brained hominins. I extend his arguments to includesound synesthesia the phenomenon by whichthe physical size or type of movement of an entity is

matched by the character of a vocal expression inlight of Brent Berlins recent research on the prevalenceof this in extant languages of traditional peoples.

While the fossil and archaeological recordsprovide substantial evidence for the co-evolution ofmusic and language, further evidence can be foundfrom examining ourselves today. The Singing Nean-derthals reviews and interprets four areas of researchwithin cognitive science. First, it examines the over-lap between music and language, recognizing both

profound similarities and differences between thesemodes of communication and expression. Second, itexamines how music and language are constituted inthe brain. To do so, it reviews case studies of peoplewho have either suffered brain lesions or been bornwith a cognitive constraint, that has inhibited eithertheir linguistic or musical ability. This fascinating evi-dence, along with the use of brain scans, shows thatwhile music and language are not entirely separatefrom each other, neither of them has a cognitive prior-ity in the adult brain in other words our musical

abilities do not appear to be simply a spin-off fromlanguage as has been proposed by Steven Pinker.The Singing Neanderthals follows the arguments ofIsabelle Peretz, a distinguished neuroscientist whohas made pioneering studies of amusia (the loss ofmusical ability). She argues that both language andmusic are constituted by a series of relatively discretemodules within the brain, some of which are mostlikely shared and some of which are dedicated to oneof these alone.

Figure 1. The evolution of music and language.


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Brains have to be understood from a devel-opmental as well as an evolutionary perspective.Consequently, The Singing Neanderthals reviews whatis currently understood about the maturation of thebrain and the development of language and musical

abilities in the child. It focuses on so-called moth-erese, the manner in which adults communicate withpre-linguistic infants and notes the highly musicalnature of this which supports arguments that babiesare born inherently musical. This appears to relate tothe need for parents to ensure infants receive substan-tial emotional support during their development andso, as a fourth task, a review is made of how musicexpresses and induces emotion.

Music is frequently cited as the language ofemotion, but is there any robust scientific evidencefor this claim? The Singing Neanderthals describes aseries of psychology experiments that demonstrate

that music not only induces emotions, but by doingso changes behaviour. The relationship between musicand emotion is of crucial importance because researchduring the last decade has recognized that emotionis a requirement for rational decision-making ratherthan being a constraint upon this. Hence, once weappreciate that our large-brained hominin ancestorshad to continually make crucial decisions about sur-vival in challenging Pleistocene landscapes, we mustalso recognize that they could only have done so bybeing highly emotional people and by implicationhighly musical.

By reviewing the evidence and theories fromprimate studies, child development, neuroscience,psychology, and the archaeological and fossil records,The Singing Neanderthals aims to develop a more so-phisticated understanding of pre-modern communica-tion systems and hence lifestyles than currentlyexists. As the book title indicates, it is particularlyconcerned with gaining an improved understand-ing of the Neanderthals and hence presents them asnot only highly intelligent but also highly emotionalindividuals who communicated with a particularlymusical version of Hmmmmm. Nevertheless, asargued in my previous work, the Neanderthals had

a domain-specific mentality which imposed a majorconstraint on their levels of creativity and symbolicthought.

The separation of a Hmmmmm into the twosystems of communication that we now refer to aslanguage and music (see Fig. 1) most likely occurredas part of the process by which modern Homo sapi-ens originated in Africa. In The Singing NeanderthalsI follow Alison Wrays arguments for the process

by which compositional language is likely to haveevolved from holistic utterances, which she describesas segmentation. Important evidence regarding thefeasibility of this process has come from the compu-tational work undertaken by Simon Kirby and his

colleagues at Edinburgh. That work has also shownhow the process of cultural transmission can play akey influence on the development of grammaticalrules. Once words had come into existence amongstearly Homo sapiens or their immediate ancestors inAfrica, the process of language evolution in termsof increasing grammatical complexity would havebegun. This is the period for which Derek Bickertonsarguments about language evolution are applicable,rather than the much earlier Plio-Pleistocene as hehimself has argued.

The evolution of compositional language fromHmmmmm would have had a profound cognitive

impact. In a previous book, The Prehistory of the Mind(1996), I argued that this would have involved thetransition from a domain-specific to a cognitively-fluidmentality and I now provide further support for thatproposal coming from the recent arguments by thephilosopher Peter Carruthers. Language effectivelydelivered the capacity for metaphor to the humanmind that underlies art, science and religion. Cogni-tive fluidity also enabled the construction of complexartefacts and the extension of the mind and body intomaterial culture. As such it provided the possibilityof musical instruments and an immense elaboration

of hominin musical abilities.In summary, The Singing Neanderthals attempts toexplain how the capacity for music evolved. To do so,it also has to address the evolution of language, thebody and the mind. It attempts to draw on the latestresearch from a diverse range of fields to both under-stand the present and produce a more accurate pictureof past communication and hominin lifestyles thancurrently exists. It shows how we became a musicalspecies and how by continuing to make and listen tomusic today we reaffirm the fact that we are productsof a long evolutionary past.

Steven MithenSchool of Human and Environmental Sciences

University of ReadingWhiteknightsPO Box 227

ReadingRG6 6AB

[email protected]


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Name that tune

Iain Morley

Steven Mithens book represents a timely endeavour

to address an area of research the importance of whichis increasingly recognized in a diversity of academicfields. The book is principally concerned with elabo-rating the idea of a shared foundation for musicaland linguistic vocal behaviours and situating it in thecontext of hominin evolution.

Mithen achieves this largely by incorporatinginto this evolutionary context the ideas of several otherresearchers. Principal is Alison Wrays idea ofholisticand manipulative (functional, in Wrays terms) earlylinguistic behaviour; with this Mithen incorporatesthe important point that communication uses bothvocal and corporeal media and is thus multi-modal,Merlin Donalds idea ofmimetic communication, andthe idea that such vocalizations would have exhibitedmusical qualities. From these components are derivedthe appropriately onomatopoeic acronym Hmmmmm,which Mithen names the pre-linguistic communica-tive behaviour. The idea of a shared precursor tolinguistic and musical behaviours is not a new one,but whilst several such observations have previouslybeen made in an evolutionary context, there havebeen few attempts to model the manifestation of suchbehaviour within the human evolutionary record as awhole. Typically, Mithen writes in an easy style which

is accessible to a broad readership, deals clearly withmaterial from a diversity of academic fields, and de-scribes archaeological sites and evidence evocatively.The content of the book has already been introducedby the author, so this review might be most usefullyconstituted by highlighting some issues and implica-tions associated with the work.

First of these is a need to define the terminologyused. Steven Mithen adopts Nettls (1983) definitionof music as human communication outside the scopeof language for the consideration of this issue, which,he professes, is perhaps as good a definition as we canget (p. 11). Thankfully it is not. This definition has the

potential to include many other behaviours, and is thustoo broad to be useful here; some of these behavioursmay indeed be part of those that constitute musicalactivities, others may not. Whilst defining music is anotoriously thorny problem, it does not seem adequateto define it as what language isnt, and this is especiallyproblematic when language isnt defined either. Finally,this seems an especially curious definition to choosewhen the chapter it introduces is concerned with com-monalities between music and language.

We are left far from clear as to what Mithenconsiders music to be, although it is a word which isused frequently and in diverse ways throughout thetext. Crosss (2003) conception of music is particularlyuseful in this regard: Music embodies, entrains and

transposably intentionalises time in sound and action.This definition encompasses both the corporeal andauditory elements of musical performance and percep-tion, and its potential to have multiple meanings itmeans different things to different people in differentcontexts (transposable intentionality). It can also beapplied to all experiences of music be they live andparticipatory, or recorded and solitary. It deliberatelyavoids cultural specificity, and whilst it does not stipu-late some of the properties of music which may beuniversals, the properties of music which it describesare universal. Whilst it is general enough to encom-pass any musical activity of any culture and era, it is

precise enough such that any activity conforming tothis definition would be considered musical.

This lack of definition is most explicit in the caseof the musical m in the Hmmmm/Hmmmmmmodel. Curiously this is the only one of the initialsthat is not clearly defined. Having a musical m asa constituent part of a type of vocalization which issupposed to be a precursor to musical behavioursseems somewhat tautological, though perhaps thisis a product of its ambiguity. The musical aspectsof Hmmmm and Hmmmmm actually permeatevarious of the proposed components of the acronym.

Music can itself be holistic, emotionally manipulativeand multi-modal, and it is the fact that this is the casethat forms the basis for the Hmmmm model; musiccannot be separated from the rest of Hmmmm. Asa consequence, when Mithen talks about the musi-cal aspects of Hmmmmm (p. 176; p. 150) it is notclear which elements he means the elements ofmusical behaviour that permeate the other letters ofthe acronym, or whatever it is that he considers themusical element of the acronym to be? Are they thesame elements when talking about the benefits ofbipedalism as when discussing Singing for sex?. Atsome levels there is also a certain amount of circular-

ity to the model: several of the proposed propertiesof Hmmmm/Hmmmmm are justified by referenceto the roles and properties of musical behaviourstoday, but then ultimately, modern musical traitsare explained by the model as being derived fromHmmmmm.

The lack of a clear conception of music or mu-sical ability also leads to several points of ambiguityin the discussion of other research. For example, inthe context of discussing brain pathologies, Mithen


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states that all suffered lesions that led to loss of lan-guage-processing abilities but preservation of musicalabilities (p. 39), but in at least two of the four patientsdescribed rhythmic perception and reproduction wereseverely impaired too. Are we not to consider these

abilities a part of musical ability? In this case it ap-pears that what Mithen means by musical abilities isin fact the perception and recognition of the melodicelements of music. In the related studies, the termsmusician and non-musician are frequently used(and repeated by Mithen). Does he agree with suchcategorizations? Typically they in fact refer to pro-fessional performers of Western music and amateurperformers or non-performers of Western music.Which elements of these categorizations does Mithenconsider to be important in the context of discussing atrait which is, it is maintained, inherent in us all?

As noted, Mithen draws upon evidence from

a wide range of fields of research in building up apicture of the extent to which musical capacitiesare innate, how music production and processing isorganized in the brain, and identifying the presenceof relevant capacities and selective pressures in thearchaeological record. But in each of these cases, onlya select portion of the relevant literature is cited. It isdifficult, of course, to cover every area of evidence inas much detail as one might wish in a single book, but150,000 words does give plenty of scope.

There is only the space here to mention a fewexamples. The investigation into the relationship(s)

between music and emotion is a rather larger area thanMithen apparently believes. The section of chapter 7entitled The language of music (pp. 8992), by whichMithen is referring to emotion, deals principally withmusic as expressing emotion or, rather, as a vehiclefor the intentional expression of emotion by a com-poser and/or performer, and the consequent responseof the listener. There are many other ways in whichmusic can communicate emotion and elicit emotionalresponses in listeners, which are highly relevant to thisstudy, quite outwith the intention of the composer orperformer (see, for example,Clynes 1977; Kivy 1989;Panksepp 1995; Gabrielsson & Juslin 1996; Addis 1999;

Davies 2001; Lavy 2001; Panksepp & Bernatsky 2002;Morley 2003, 15062).In the case of the fossil record for vocal tract and

auditory evolution, the body of literature available isalso large, and many relevant analyses of fossil homin-ins, vocal-tract reconstructions, and evidence of vocalcapabilities, are not cited (e.g. Laitman & Heimbuch1982; Laitman 1984; Magriples & Laitman 1987; Lait-man & Reidenberg 1988; Arensberg et al. 1990; Ross &Ravosa 1993; Budil 1994; Fitch 2000). Mithen does cite

works relating to muscular innervation in the controlof breathing (MacLarnon & Hewitt 1999) and thetongue (Kay et al. 1998). He does not, however, exploremore recent papers published in response to those ar-ticles. The discussion of the thoracic canal dimensions

ofHomo ergaster (specifically, the Nariokotome boyKNM-WT 15000) would benefit from a considerationof the paper by Frayer & Nicolay (2000) in additionto that of MacLarnon & Hewitt (1999). Frayer andNicolay (in Wallin et al.s The Origins of Music) disa-gree with MacLarnon & Hewitt on several points ofanalysis and physiological capabilities; in fact, theirviews are artificially polarized (Morley 2002; 2003), buta full picture of the breathing and vocal-control capa-bilities of KNM-WT 15000 is only achievable througha consideration of both sets of findings. Similarly thefindings of Kay et al. (1998) regarding the hypoglossalcanal should be considered in light of the later research

by DeGusta et al. (1999), which found that many non-human primates have hypoglossal canal dimensionswithin the range of modern humans, both in absoluteterms and relative to the volume of the oral cavity, andthat the same applied to several fossil species.

Although Mithens work derives much from thecomments of John Blacking (1973) regarding his workwith the Venda people of South Africa, there is littleother consideration of the manifestation of musicalbehaviours outside of the familiar modern Westerncontext.

Such consideration would be useful in helping

to ensure that a representative concept of musicalbehaviours in modern humans is generated, andhighlighting the roles which such behaviours canfulfil in modern hunter-gatherer subsistence contexts.Several general comments are made, such as Mimick-ing and performing mimes of animals are pervasiveamong all such [modern hunter-gatherer] societiesas part of their hunting practices and religious ritu-als (p. 168), but without citation. Similarly Mithenstates that when living in conditions of adversity,[modern humans] make music (p. 236); but the onlycitation made regarding the making of music in con-ditions of adversity relates to the Venda, and states

that they did not make music when facing periodsof hunger or stress. In fact, they did the reverse: theymade communal music when food was plentiful (p.209). If there were references to back up the formerassertion (e.g. Johnston 1989; Nettl 1992; Turino 1992;Locke 1996; McAllester 1996), the latter would seemless problematic.

But none of the preceding comments really con-stitute objections to the model itself, which includesseveral appealing ideas. There are a few areas of ambi-


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guity, however (in addition to the conception of musicitself), that seem to arise in Mithens exposition of theways his model would be manifest. There are severalaspects which could be addressed; I shall focus on justone the singing Neanderthals themselves.

In the context of discussing Neanderthals (Nean-derthals in love), Mithen attributes to them advancedHmmmmm; he explains this as being different fromthe Hmmmmm of their predecessors in that theytook this communication system to an extreme (p.221) i.e. a more emotional, more tonal, more socialversion of what was done before. Advanced Hm-mmmm is also characterized by Mithen in terms ofwhat we have apparently lost, which in his terms isan extreme sensitivity to the general auditory environ-ment and emotional sensitivity to the vocal and physi-cal actions of others. He suggests that we occasionallyhave flashes of the type of experience that would

have been common for Neanderthals, at a ballet, forexample. But I am not convinced that modern humans

per se have demonstrably lost such sensitivities. WhatMithen describes seems to me to be representative ofsome modern western human experience. As such, Icant help but feel that the nature of the singing un-dertaken by the Neanderthals of the title of the bookrequires some more elaboration.

Mithen maintains that Neanderthals lacked sym-bolic language and behaviour (the one being taken asa proxy for the other). A lack of symbolizing capacitydoes not conflict with a capacity for holistic meaning

in vocal sounds, according to Mithen, because thecommunication was holistic rather than compositional(p. 231). But then he proposes that Neanderthals hada larger number of holistic phrases than previous spe-cies ofHomo, phrases with greater semantic complex-ity for use in a wider range of more specific situations.I think it is also likely that some of these were usedin conjunction with each other to create simple nar-ratives (p. 234).

What is not clear is how it is possible to havea semantic element without this being in some waysymbolic. Also, what would the content of such a nar-rative be, if not symbolic in some way? In any case,

presumably any such narrative could only concernsubject matter from a single cognitive domain suchas Natural History Intelligence, or Technological Intel-ligence, or Social Intelligence, because without cog-nitive fluidity Neanderthals would only have beencapable of using such holistic phrases in conjunctionwith each other if each drew upon the same cognitiveintelligence domain. Or perhaps all Hmmmmm ut-terances rely only on the Social Intelligence domain,as they are ultimately derived from emotive vocaliza-

tions mediating social relationships? But then, mime ofanimals relies on Natural History Intelligence, surely,as would the use of Hmmmmm for the planning ofhunts (p. 237)? How would the capacity for a form ofHmmmmm utterance related to hunting activities

develop from the Hmmmmm utterances that arederived from social mediation, without some degreeof cognitive fluidity? I am not seeking to suggestthat these behaviours that Mithen describes were notpossible, but only that it would be valuable to have agreater explication of how he sees these capabilitiesthat he describes fitting within his existing ideas.

Incorporating as it does the great selling points ofNeanderthals, sex and music (two of which feature inthe title), this book is bound to reach a wide audience,and should stimulate debate and further research. Itraises a number of interesting points, and some ofthe ideas suggested should prove to be testable with

more in-depth investigation. It falls somewhat short,however, of the authors statement that it provides acomplete account not only of how music and languageevolved but also of how they relate to the evolutionof the human mind, body and society (p. 7), for anumber of reasons.

Iain MorleyThe McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Downing StreetCambridge

CB2 3ER

Email: [email protected]

Joining the Dots: the Evolutionary Picture ofLanguage and Music

Alison Wray

As an ex-professional musician, I read with particularinterest Mithens evolutionary account for the similari-ties and differences between language and music. He

generously acknowledges the role that my propos-als about how language evolved have played in thedevelopment of his own theory, but the scope of hisendeavour is much, much broader than mine, anddraws into the frame many observations and lines ofevidence that I had not even considered in the contextof evolution.

The evolutionary relationship between languageand music is a worthy focus of attention, particularlywithin a framework of asking what, exactly, music


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is for, and why it is not more similar in form andfunction to language. Like language, music servesas an emotional conduit, certainly, and the makingof music is a hugely significant social activity. But itssemantic potential, which is surely immense, is barely

realized. At the periphery, music does carry meaning TV themes and Leitmotifs can forge very strongassociations, while the playing of a national anthemcan have a speech-act-like force. Yet rarely, if ever,are arbitrary note sequences or chords paired withspecific meanings in the way that phonemes are, andthe scope for novelty in music, governed though it isby the grammars of melody and harmony, and ableto feature embedding and recursion, does not extendto a hierarchical making of meaning.

There are a number of possible reasons why.Perhaps the harmonic relational properties of musicrender it incapable of carrying meaning with suffi-

cient latitude: overriding constraints on what soundsbelong together might interfere with the capacity tocreate novel configurations. However, one has to becareful neither to bepost hoc nor culture-centric here:although harmonic relations are founded on thephysics of sound waves, our sense of what soundsmusical is at least partially a product of culturalconditioning.

Another possible explanation is that music is notprocessed in the part(s) of the brain it would need tobe, for it to link up with meaning. Research suggestsotherwise (e.g. Maess et al. 2001), though whether

processing locus determines functionality or viceversa is unclear (Wray 2002). Recent discussion aboutmirror neurons and language evolution (Arbib 2005)suggests that the locus of the neurons that control afunction may be of considerable importance for un-derstanding its aetiology. But we may have to wait forclear answers, for new technologies in cognitive neu-roscience have raised doubts about how to measureneural activity in the processing of complex functions(Sidtis 2000).

Mithens own explanation is different again:music does not carry meaning, because languagedoes. And in that case, it is natural to ask what music

might have been able to do had language not beenthere in Neanderthals, for instance. Mithensproposal is, I think, largely compatible with what weknow about music, language and human evolution.Having said that, we know so little, that many dif-ferent proposals would be equally compatible. I seelittle of concern in his belief that a lot can be achievedcommunicatively with a relatively inflexible system,for we see this in evidence in other animals. The chal-lenge, of course, is that of establishing at what point

in the evolution of humankind an inflexible systemmight have ceased to be sufficient. Mithen believes,as do I, that that point may have come surprisinglylate in the story.

If there is any part of Mithens story that I am

not fully convinced by, it is the matter of just wheretaught musicality departs from something morenatural. That music of some description can be anatural vehicle for self-expression is not at issue, buthow should we relate such a vehicle to the specificphenomenon that we more generally term music a product refined and augmented by manufacturedcultural practice? As indicated by the evidence uponwhich he draws, Mithen implicitly depicts westernmusic as a version, albeit formalized, of spontaneous,emotionally infused musical expression, and as a natu-ral extension of the Hmmmm communication that heattributes to our pre-modern ancestors. To my taste,

western classical music (as indeed most other musicaltraditions worldwide) is different in kind. Its produc-tion is, for a start, subject to a heavy burden of learn-ing that few master. There is no naturally facilitatedaccess to the comprehension (let alone creation) ofthe kinds of melodies, harmonies and rhythms foundin the works of Bach or Schoenberg: no equivalent for music of this kind of first language acquisi-tion. The interpretation of such music is also learned,if one moves beyond mere gut emotional reactions,into the spotting of styles, allusions and meanings.The naive ear will not discern that in The Magic Flute

the three flats in the home key of E major possiblysymbolize the threefold initiation rite and the threepillars of the temple of humanity while C minorsymbolizes an incomplete grasp of masonic ideals(Hill & Cotte 2005). As a result, I am more in sympathywith Pinker than Mithen is, regarding the view thatthis kind of music is a late add-on that arises from,and must be sustained by, specific cultural impetus.Indeed, George Grace and myself propose that someof the fundamental features of language itself are alsosecondary and culturally-supported (Wray & Gracein press), so there is no difficulty for us in seeing thesame gradation in music.

However, within the Wray & Grace framework,the above objection is not terminal for Mithensproposed scenario: we resolve the problem of howcultural augmentation relates to natural abilities notby separating them absolutely, but by challengingthe assumption that there are any absolutes. No oneis raised in a cultureless environment, and quite pos-sibly no single culture ever accesses and maximizesall aspects of an individuals natural ability. In viewof this, our model derives the natural-augmented con-


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trast from a continuum of complexity supported to alesser or greater extent by culture. Specifically, there isa conservative natural default that can be modified,under certain kinds of cultural pressure, to create andsustain a secondary level of signal complexity, which

will fall away again if the cultural pressure reduces(Wray & Grace in press). Although we offer this modelin relation to language, there is no difficulty, I think,in extending it to music.

The key impact of all of this is that I wouldhesitate to develop an argument about the originsand characteristics of natural musicality on the basisof how people appear to use learned musical skills.These I would rather place on the far end of the cul-tural augmentation continuum that gives us writing,computer-mediated communication and, in Wray &Graces proposal, also some features of syntax. Wherewould the accommodation of this objection leave

Mithens account? In assembling his evidence forhow musical ability relates organically and function-ally to linguistic ability, he would no longer be ableto draw on certain of the neurological cases, such asthe retention or loss of piano-playing abilities afterbrain damage, and the locus of the processing ofmusic in professional musicians. Such studies shouldbe separated from those that reveal the selective lossor retention of musical abilities that are closer to thenatural default. Classifying the evidence, however,would probably require more information than manyof the original reports provide. In addition, one would

need a robust model of just how musical educationmight affect the processing of music, to parallel theneurolinguists interest in how literacy affects theprocessing of language. I know too little about theneurological processing of natural musical skills tobe sure, but my guess, on the basis of neurolinguisticevidence, is that there might in fact be stronger evi-dence of double dissociation between language andthe more natural skills of music (sense of rhythm andpitch, the production of sung vocalisations, etc.) thanthere is for skills developed through prolonged anddeliberate study and practice.

If so, it may be that all one needs to do is move

the reference line: some of the kinds of music thatMithen sees as primary and central expressions ofour evolutionary heritage are simply made secondaryand more peripheral. Crucially, the continuum modelmeans that they remain part of our potential, in thesame way that universal linguistic relations such asSubjacency, which cannot be observed in unwrittenlanguages (because only written languages regularlyprovide grammatical configurations sufficiently com-

plex to house them), seem to emerge naturally whenthe conditions finally pertain (Newmeyer 2002).

In evaluating The Singing Neanderthals,one has toconsider what the book is aiming to achieve. Mithensintention is to offer a coherent story, by taking a huge

range of independent observations and claims from theliterature, and weaving them into a narrative. Everytime he makes an inferential leap about what someneurological observation or archaeological discoverymight mean, there is opportunity for someone to object.But constructive critics of Mithens book will not simplylunge iconoclastically at individual points and believethat, by challenging them, they have made a contribu-tion to knowledge. Rather, they will assess the extent towhich their observation affects Mithens bigger picture,and suggest patches where they can, and a plausiblealternative of equal scope where they cannot.

This is a bold book that develops just one sce-

nario for what happened. We need narratives of thiskind if our studies of human evolution are to getanywhere. Modern research is often piecemeal in-vestigations focus on some particular question withlimited capacity for generalization, and are in dangerof never being adequately related back to the biggerpicture. Yet, as Popper noted, it is the bigger picturethat provides the rationale for the underlying assump-tions that infuse our work for the predictions andhypotheses we make. There need to be big pictures,against which the various accumulated pieces of evi-dence can be measured, while the evidence, in turn,

confirms, challenges or modifies the picture itself. Ina research context like the evolution of human cogni-tive and communicative capacities, picture-buildersneed to be particularly bold, because there simplyis not enough information for their endeavour to beother than a join-the-dots exercise. There is undoubt-edly more than one way to make a picture out of thedots, but unless you get on with making one of them,nothing moves on. Steve Mithen is an expert picture-maker. He has the imagination and courage to askthe what if? questions, follow a scenario through toa conclusion, and offer us something to think aboutand react to.

Alison WrayCentre for Language and Communication Research

Cardiff UniversityHumanities Building, Colum Drive,

CardiffCF10 3EU

UKEmail: [email protected]


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Abracadabra! Early Hominin for I thinkmy hummings out of tune with the rest of

the world!

Maggie Tallerman

One of the major tenets of this book is that Early Hu-mans communicated at least as long ago as 1.8 myr by using a system that Mithen terms Hmmmmm,standing for Holistic, manipulative, multi-modal,musical and mimetic. Mithens big idea is that therewas a single precursor for both music and language(p. 26), a communication system rather like a musicalscore, but comprising holistic vocalizations, hand andbody gestures, mimesis, even song and dance. All ofthese features combine to what other people mightcall protolanguage, or pre-language.

But Mithen, as a non-linguist, has seized rathertoo eagerly on a lovely, simple idea: since the vocaliza-tions of other primates are holistic (not decomposableinto any component parts, having nothing analogousto words or morphemes) then the earliest language-like hominin utterances must similarly have beenholistic. Lovely, but to most linguists, clearly wrong.Mithen gives as an example of the possible contentof a single holistic utterance Go and hunt the hare Isaw five minutes ago behind the stone at the top ofthe hill (p. 172).

Lets get this straight: we are talking about anera long before theres any syntax or clauses, nor (inMithens view) any words, so all of this hare story issupposedly represented by one utterance, perhapssupplemented by gestures or a tune. As Mithen putsit (p. 172) Each phrase would have been an indivisibleunit that had to be learned, uttered and understoodas a single acoustic sequence. Problem number one:each utterance also has to be stored as a single conceptin the hominins mental lexicon, and retrieved fromstorage to be uttered. Now, it cannot conceivably bethe case that the lexicon at any stage prior to the emer-gence of fully modern humans was more complex thanit is today, yet nothing remotely as complex is stored

as a single concept in any known languages. Mithenshare example is the conceptual equivalent of no lessthan three clauses. But modern speakers have beenshown to engage in conceptual planning only at thelevel of a single clause a mental proposition. Sohow could early hominins possibly have had thelexical capacity to store, retrieve and execute a singleutterance which corresponds to several clauses worthof semantic content? And if they could, why has thisamazing capacity been lost?

Problem number two: like all linguistic or proto-linguistic communication, holistic utterances mustbe culturally transmitted; in other words, they areunlike ape calls, which are essentially innate. So howdid anyone ever learn the highly specific meanings

that Mithen attributes to his holistic utterances? Theidea that any bunch of hominins (then or now) couldeven agree on the meanings of a set of these hugelycomplex utterances, let alone learn them, just doesntsquare with what we know about the brain. Mithenargues that Neanderthal children (amongst otherhominins) could have acquired a large number ofholistic phrases (p. 241), but fails to address the factthat this is a far harder task than learning a set of proto-words, where one word equals and can be storedand retrieved as a single lexical concept.

Problem number three. Assume with Mithen thatwords ultimately emerge from longer holistic utter-

ances when chance similarities occur in the phoneticstrings, and can be imbued with similar meanings.He gives an example of Alison Wrays: if a phrasetebima meant give that to her and a phrase kumapimeant share this with her, then an individual mightrecognize that ma was a common phonetic segmentin both phrases, and her a common aspect of theirmeaning (p. 253). An obvious objection is that this isnot at all how the development of pronouns and other

function words proceeds: it is axiomatic in linguisticsthat they emerge from content words via well under-stood processes ofgrammaticalization (basically, this

means losing lexical content and becoming merelygrammatical). This aside, the major drawback withthe proposal is that our hominins are supposed to beable to extract the common bit of sound/meaning nomatter where the string ma occurs in the utterance (andpresumably, that might be somewhere in the middleof a much longer string, such as bupakagulodimaladop-ubogo after all, Mithen does note that the holisticphrases [...] of our human ancestors may have beenof considerable length, having evolved over milleniaand proliferated in number to provide ever greatersemantic specificity: p. 254).

Why is the idea of such an ability a problem? Be-

cause once again, nothing remotely like it occurs in anyknown language in linguistically sophisticated Homosapiens. In languages with agglutinating or polysyn-thetic morphology, each word contains a lexical stemwhich is preceded and followed by a number of otherbound (inseparable, non-independent) morphemes; asingle utterance may be very long, corresponding to anentire clause in a language like English. But the orderof elements within words is fixed: each morphemeis allocated a position in a morphemic template, which


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specifies an exact order for each verb or noun stem,and all the other classes of morphemes attached to it.We never find random ordering of chunks of meaning:this simply wouldnt be learnable. So Mithens poorhominins, struggling towards Language, evidently

possess superhuman analytical capabilities.So far, then, we have seen that the nice, straight-

forward idea of holistic pre-language must be wrong,because at all levels (lexical storage, lexical access,lexical acquisition, speech processing) it requires lin-

guistic abilities far beyond those of modern humans.(A number of other detailed arguments in this veinare outlined in Tallerman in press.)

Why, then, do proponents of holistic proto-language like the idea? A big part of it, for Mithen atleast, is because a holistic protolanguage of this type isevidently on an evolutionary continuity with ape-likevocalizations (p. 149). The point is presumably that

the more continuity we envisage between pre-homininvocalizations and early hominin utterances, the lesswe have to explain about how Language emerged. Ihad thought that as a polarized debate, this had longgone extinct. Apparently not. Mithen seems to thinkthat opponents of holistic protolanguage are justagainst the idea of continuityper se (p. 149). But thisisnt the case. It is rather clear, for instance, that themotor function of speech draws on phylogeneticallyancient mammalian oral capacities for sucking, lick-ing, swallowing and chewing (Studdert-Kennedy &Goldstein 2003, 239). From such actions, these authors

suggest, comes the hominin protosyllable and I ampleased to concur. At a basic level, its obvious thatthe common ancestor of chimp and human at around56 mya had a vocal tract, tongue and lips and glottis,ears, and much else besides that weve now co-optedfor speaking and listening. But speech (production,perception, even neural mechanisms supporting) isnot language, as Mithen himself concedes in a footnote(19, p. 312).

Moreover, there are a number of serious waysin which primate vocalization differs from language.Mithen even lists some of these (a subset of the pointsmentioned in Tallerman in press); see note 18, p. 312.

But then he straightaway dismisses them. Doesnt itmatter that different neuroanatomical structures areresponsible for language than for primate vocaliza-tion; that in the main, primate vocalization is notunder voluntary control; that primate calls are madeon both the inbreath and the outbreath, whereaslanguage vocalizations are made on the outbreath;

that primate calls are essentially genetically transmit-ted (innate) while the vocalizations of language arelearned? Most of all, doesnt it matter that primatecalls differ radically from linguistic utterances inthat the latter, and only the latter, dissociate sound

and meaning? Only in Language do we see the finiteset of speech sounds combined and re-combined tomake up the infinite set of meanings that humans canconceptualize. This stuff is not trivia, and Languageis not just a few easy steps away from the ancestralcall system, which is how I think Mithen would liketo portray things.

Still on continuity, Mithen actually underestimatesthe communicative importance of gesture-calls (Burl-ing 2005): non-linguistic and paralinguistic gesturesand signals such as laughter, sobs, screams, frowns,smiles, snarls, shrugs and many more, all of whichshare crucial characteristics with the communica-

tion systems of other primates. Mithen assumes thatHmmmmm includes these features, and I wholeheart-edly agree that they are essential to human commu-nication. Where Mithen and I part company is overthe need to postulate an additional layer of vocal-ized holistic utterances, primarily concerned withthe manipulation of other individuals. He regardsthese as crucial for the type of subtle and sensitivecommunication that is required for the developmentand maintenance of social relationships (p. 148). Butwhy? We dont need holistic utterances in order toconvey our feelings this is exactly what gesture-

calls do. Protolanguage (or, indeed, Language) of anykind barely even enhances and certainly doesntusurp the role of the ancient non-verbal features inmaintaining social relationships. Postulating a holisticprotolanguage to do the social stuff is then an unneces-sary evolutionary digression, and one from which wewould have to backtrack to get words. Mithen leadsus down a blind alley, and at the end were no nearerto the origins of language.

In sum, a great bedtime read but only for thosewho enjoy fiction.

Maggie Tallerman

Linguistics SectionSELLL

University of Newcastle upon TyneNewcastle upon Tyne

NE1 7RUUK

Email: [email protected]


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Musical Chairs

Clive Gamble

Make your own music and liberate all of these homi-

nids that still reside within you, is Steven Mithensfinal exhortation in this richly textured, and engross-ing account of why archaeology matters to the studyof human evolution. Mithen sets himself a hard task;to provide an evolutionary account of music. Hard, be-cause like most Palaeoanthropologists, archaeologistsneither use nor understand evolutionary theory (Foley2001, 5). Doubly hard, because most archaeologicaldiscussions revolve around a very few ancient musicalinstruments: I once examined a PhD that had amassedthe entire corpus of less than a hundred pieces, most ofthem from one site, Isturitz. And trebly hard, becauseto venture into music is to question the hegemony oflanguage as the human attribute to explain.

Mithen succeeds brilliantly on all three countsand I recommend you read the book to see ex-actly how. But as you might expect in such a wide-ranging and bold account there are some loose endsand unexplored areas that I want to pursue.

Let me start with the sub-title: the origins ofmusic, language, mind and body. There is plenty in thebook that deals with the first three but very little thataddresses the body. Bodies, in Mithens account, arephysical containers that had to undergo evolution sothat through bipedalism, that involved both walking

and running, they developed the necessary apparatusand motor skills to produce sound. These same bodiesare also vehicles that move the singer/speaker aroundthe landscape, bringing them together to enjoy therich emotions of communal living, those endorphinrushes that flow from healthy exercise and singing inunison. The Singing Neanderthals is therefore a brain:body book, a Cartesian statement about adaptation, sothat whats good for the mind is good for the species.Some of this stems from the homunculus model ofthe modular mind that Mithen (1996a,b) favours andwhich over time, and through the process of cognitivefluidity, bootstrapped the various cognitive domains

together. The homunculus is the bootstrapper writ-ing those programmes to produce desired effects, themaster builder who transformed the parish churchinto a Minster. Damasio (2000) sums up the effect asextended consciousness that distinguishes us from ourprimate cousins. Extended consciousness, like cogni-tive fluidity, produces the capacity to be aware of alarge compass of entities and events, i.e. the abilityto generate a sense of individual perspective, owner-ship and agency, over a larger compass of knowledge

than that surveyed in core consciousness (Damasio2000, 198).

The Singing Neanderthals is therefore not a bookfor the phenomenologist. This is a pity because it tee-ters so often on the brink of treating the body properly

rather than as a set of legs to move the brain aroundthe environment. Mithen writes convincingly of theneed to include emotions into our accounts of humanevolution and encourages us all to see hominins whis-tling while they worked. Music enriches the experi-ence of interaction, especially between mother andchild and the passages on the significance of lullabiesare especially good. Music is therefore, he argues,ancestral to language and not some later Pinker-ishexaptation of auditory cheesecake.

However, we bond through music because of itsembodied structure rather than its cognitive sense.We experience the world through our bodies and

construct metaphorical concepts grounded on suchexperience. The shift from trying to construct artificialintelligence (AI) in robots, using cartesian models, tosituating artificial life (AL) as an embodied activitythat inhabits the world rather than simply adaptingto it (Anderson 2003), provides a useful parallel thatstudies of human evolution might take to heart.

I would go further and say that before languageor music there were objects and these were also used,as children do long before they can speak (Bloom2004; Hespos & Spelke 2004), to construct embodied,metaphorical concepts about the world. In this re-

spect I agree with Donalds (1998, 61) identificationof mimesis, an implementable action metaphor, ratherthan language, as the key cognitive skill of hominins.Moreover, mimetic styles of thought and communi-cation that model the whole body, including all itsvoluntary action-systems, in three dimensional space(Donald 1998, 49) were the platform for music andlanguage in whatever order they appeared. However,rather surprisingly, mimesis comes later in Mithenschronology. He neatly sums up early hominin com-munication by the acronym Hmmmm (Holistic, multi-modal, manipulative and musical). That further, allimportant fifth m, mimetic, is only added he believes

with the Neanderthals. This seems to me to ignore theancestry of artefacts and action metaphors and suc-cumbs once again to the domination of language asthe thing to explain during human evolution.

Which brings me to the performative ques-tion and how artefacts, that include bodies, interact.Mithen is quiet on the issue of performance, onlytalking of gestures and rhythms when they reinforcethe rational task of adaptation. But performance is thething, as Goffman (1959; 1967) argued with his notion


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of the territories of the self, and where in face-to-faceinteraction afront is maintained and a line acted out.The dramaturgical metaphor is inescapable once mu-sic is considered because, as Lvi-Strauss famouslysaid, music is at once intelligible and untranslatable

(Leach 1970, 115). A discussion of the evolutionaryimportance of music should be the forum wherean embodied account of adaptation is emphasized.The question as AL has discovered is not how to getrobots to think about the world but instead how dothey perform who they are? As Mithen points out,music is seldom, if ever, heard or performed withoutaccompanying movements that are integral to ourenchainment in an extended consciousness.

The same applies to objects once we have chal-lenged the hegemony of language as the only sourceof meaning. But we cannot divorce these acts fromthe performances that initiated them, for example the

rhythmic chipping of stone (and its accompanyingstaccato sounds) or singing baby to sleep. Withoutperformance, musicology is like museology; study-ing sounds and objects in isolation separated by theclosed eyes and the glass case. The alternative is toreturn to those metaphorical connections that musicand material culture make (Tilley 1999) and where,as Nick Cook reminds us, we run out of words justwhen we have something to say about them. The wayback is through the body and the relational rather thansimply rational view of our many-faceted homininworlds. It is these relationships that a consideration

of music liberates rather than a melody of homininsfrom within our heads.

Clive GambleCentre for Quaternary Research

Department of GeographyRoyal Holloway University of London

EghamTW20 0EX

UKEmail: [email protected]

Reply

I am grateful to Clive, Maggie, Iain and Alison for theircomments on The Singing Neanderthals. When readingtheir views, I realized that I am nothing if not an aca-demic masochist by voluntarily subjecting my workto such critical evaluation. Various weaknesses anderrors have been claimed in the work, some of whichI agree with and some of which I will contest.

Iain takes me to task for not having defined mu-sic, while contradictorily and erroneously claimingthat I adopted Nettls definition. All I mean by musicis human produced sound that has a rhythmic and/ormelodic content a minimalist definition that clearly

encompasses many sounds which are not convention-ally recognized as music in our own culture, such asspoken language, while also excluding some acceptedpieces of music, such as John Cages 4' 33". I am happyto accept the latter and its like as music, if that is whatthe composer wishes, just as I am prepared to acceptTracey Emins unmade bed as art. In contrast to Iain, Idont find Crosss conception of music useful becauseits meaning is obscure to me. I also get rather tired ofterminological debates about the definition of music,language or symbolism, as we all know that suchdefinitions are culturally specific. So I am happy toleave such debates to Iain and others while I get on

with more productive research.The distinction I should have made explicit was

between a natural biologically based musicality andmusic as a culturally constructed phenomenon whichbuilds upon that biological basis. So the musical min Hmmmmm ought to stand for the former whichhad seemed quite obvious to me already while thelatter developed after Hmmmmm had bifurcated intomusic and language. Although I appreciate that thefollowing have a culturally learnt component, I woulddescribe bird song, whale song, primate vocalizationsand baby babble as possessing musicality rather than

being music.This is the distinction that Alison emphasizes:natural musicality as a vehicle of self expression incontrast to the phenomenon that we more gener-ally term music which is refined and augmented bymanufactured cultural practice. I had tried to drawthis distinction in my final chapter when I consideredthe development of musical technology, expertise andelitism, but perhaps should have made the distinc-tion more explicit far earlier on within the book, as Inow appreciate it is of greater significance than I hadpreviously considered. I concur with Alison that thebrains of expert musicians, those who have invested

much of their childhood and adult lives to practisinginstruments, may tell us little about the neurologi-cal basis of the natural default and I did indeedmake precisely that point (p. 34). Unfortunately thereare simply insufficient neurological studies availableat present to make the separate studies of naturaland culturally enhanced musical abilities that isevidently desirable. I did my best with the evidence Ihad available. Fortunately, the neuroscience of musicis developing apace: within a few years we should


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have far more sophisticated understanding of musicand the brain.

Iain also berates me for not including a rangeof additional evidence and citations that would havefurther strengthened my arguments. There is always

more than can be included in an academic study,especially one that draws on data and ideas fromnumerous disciplines. But I felt the book was longenough already and the works he mentions are of lesssignificance than the ones I included.

I was deeply disappointed with Maggie Taller-mans comment. Not because of its predictable content,but because it illustrated how she, in common withtoo many linguists, struggle to think in evolutionaryterms. Being familiar with some aspects of her work,I knew that Maggie would disagree with the notionof holistic proto-language as elaborated in The SingingNeanderthals. I suggested her as a commentator to the

editor ofCAJbecause I assumed she would engage ina constructive fashion with the arguments. Alas, I waswrong: her criticisms are of little significance and shedescends into rudeness when calling my work fiction.It is indeed that last statement that my book is suit-able only for those who enjoy fiction which exposesher shameful refusal to engage with the fossil andarchaeological evidence for human evolution. Andwhen she claims that my hominins were strugglingtowards language it is clear that she fundamentallymisunderstands the nature of evolution and the argu-ments in my book: there is no teleology in my theory.

Maggie seems to believe that because primate vocali-zations and human language are different, then therecannot be any evolutionary relationship. I sense herea lingering desire not only to keep humans up on theircreationist pedestal, unsullied by any evolutionarycontinuity with other animals, but linguists on theirself-anointed academic pedestal sadly isolatingthemselves from the inter-disciplinary studies andhindering the development of knowledge.

I find Maggies criticisms of limited significance:while they may require a refinement of my ideasregarding holistic proto-language they do not seemto challenge it in any significant manner. All she

seems to be saying is that modern language todayis different from Hmmmmm. Well, yes, of course. Ifully agree that there are issues to address regardingthe potential semantic complexity of Hmmmmm ut-terances, the means by which these could have beenacquired by children and the evolutionary processof segmentation. My book argued that the musical-ity of Hmmmmm played a key role in each of theseprocesses, and the role of such musicality was en-tirely ignored by Maggie in her comments (indeed

she ignored almost all the book). She seems to wantto do no more than impose a watered-down versionof modern-day language onto our human ancestorsrather than recognizing that the complexity of theirbehaviour and cultural accomplishments demands

something quite different.The key issue is when did the transition from

a holistic ancestral call system/proto-language to acomposition language occur or as Alison phrasesthis in her comment, when did an inflexible system ofcommunication cease to be sufficient? Maggie appearsto agree that the ancestral call system was holisticand seems to believe that this transition to a flexiblecompositional language occurred at an early stage,presumably with the emergence of the Homo genus(as with most evolutionary linguists there is no hintat any time-frame in her views). This is the standardargument about the evolution of language that has

been proposed for more than a decade and led usnowhere. It is simply incompatible with the evidencefrom the archaeological and fossil record: The SingingNeanderthals argued that the transition was a late eventand by so doing was able to explain the character ofearly human behaviour that had hitherto remainedincongruous with theories of language evolution. HereI disagree with Alison when she claims that we knowso little about the past that many different proposalswould be compatible with the evidence. My view, in-evitably, is that The Singing Neanderthals proposes theonly scenario we have at present which is compatible

with not only the archaeological and fossil evidence,but also that which we know about the brain, childdevelopment and the impact of music on our emo-tions. I would like to read some others.

Clive says that to venture into music is toquestion the hegemony of language as the humanattribute to explain. I sincerely hope he is correct,and I certainly began writing The Singing Neanderthalswithout any intention of addressing the evolution oflanguage. I am unsure whether the fact that I wasdrawn to write about language as well as music is anindication that Clive is ultimately wrong languageis indeed the key human attribute to explain or

whether I simply lost my way. Neither did I beginthe book with an intention to address the body, butthe process of researching and writing took me on anintellectual journey that left me according to Clive teetering so often on the brink of treating the bodyproperly rather than just as a set of legs to move thebrain around the environment. Well, I had hoped tohave gone a little further than this as I believe, and hadhoped to explain, that the body is far more than this. Iam, however, still learning and finding Clives recent


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writings about the body and artefacts very stimulat-ing. Similarly with regard to performance: havingwritten and reflected on The Singing Neanderthals I nowfully agree that performance is the thing but I didnot have that view prior to completing the work.

As Alison notes, The Singing Neanderthals is abold book, one that seeks to provide a big picturefor human evolution by integrating research frommany diverse fields of study, extending way beyondmy own expertise. From day to day, review to review,I alternate between thinking I was brave and stupidto attempt to write such a book. The reviews fromClive, Maggie, Iain and Alison have taught me a greatdeal, as indeed have the reviews that have appearedelsewhere and the responses to the talks I have given.None of these have led me to question the veracity ofthe key ideas in the book, but I would certainly write itnow with a different emphasis and understanding. Or

rather I now feel prepared to undertake new strandsof research into the origin of music and the musical-ity of our human ancestors and relatives, building onthe foundation I hope to have provided in The SingingNeanderthals. By doing so, I submit myself to nothingbut years of academic frustration: the Neanderthalsand their cousins have all left the stage, letting a fewof their props drop to the floor. Like their bones, thesewill forever remain silent not even a murmur or atwitch about how our ancestors may once have sangand danced long before they had words to speak.

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the singing neanderthals

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