Language, Music, Fire, and Chess: Remarks on Music Evolution and Acquisition

There is considerable debate about the evolution of both language and music cognition in human beings (see [10, 13, 24, 25] for the former, and [6, 11, 21, 33] for the latter). However, the two debates have distinct characters. In the case of language, most agree that there exists a significant biological component to the underlying cognitive system that modern humans enjoy, which in some form was either the direct or indirect product of evolutionary changes in biology. In the case of music, however, human ability in this domain has recently been compared to mastery of fire (an obvious cultural invention) [21] and specifically dismissed as not arising through evolutionary forces, understood in the standard Darwinian sense. Patel’s primary arguments [21] for this relate to childhood acquisition, which he argues occurs quite differently for language and music. In particular, he claims that there is no critical period for acquisition of music perception. I examine his arguments here, coming to quite different conclusions.