In part three of my series about the incredible human, I am going to talk about our ability to create, interact, and enjoy music. Music is found in all human cultures and thus appears to be part of our biology and not simply a cultural phenomenon. Although many animals can perceive the components of music the way we do, at least some also enjoy similar aspects of sounds, musicality is strictly human. We think of birds as singing, but they are merely communicating using complex patterns of rhythm and pitch, much the way humans employ intonation while speaking. For instance, we may speak more quickly and louder when excited. Additionally, we raise the pitch of the final word when asking a question. But music composition, performance, and appreciation are strictly human phenomena. This post will focus on how music may have been with us since before speech and may be credited with helping us connect as social beings, among other benefits.
Read MoreLanguage is the one thing that truly sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. It has enabled us to adapt to new environments and situations much faster than evolution allows. Indeed, many aspects of language act in parallel with evolution. Since speech leaves no physical clues for archeologists to find, little is known regarding when and how we acquired it. Christine Kenneally explains the problem of exploring the advent of language in her book The First Word. She states, "For all its power to wound and seduce, speech is our most ephemeral creation; it is little more than air. It exits the body as a series of puffs and dissipates quickly into the atmosphere. ... there are no verbs preserved in amber, no ossified nouns, and no prehistorical shrieks forever spread-eagled in the lava that took them by surprise." Scientists have had a difficult time piecing together the story of how we developed language. This post will cover some of their findings.
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