I'm sorry I doubted your claim about the chimp drumming. BTW you are wrong to see my skepticism as an accusation that you were lying. People can be wrong without lying.
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it's another symptom of refusing to consider the fascinating possibilities surrounding the origins of music, for reasons I just don't get. Saying God did it is fine if you aren't interested, but if you aren't then just say that it's enough for youto believe that God made music for Himself, but that you understand why others want to explore the possibilities. Of course, if science said that about everything, it wouldn't get very far.
I will point out that in a previous post, I myself xpressed the opinion that natural selection accounts for our tastes in foods - liking sweets and disliking bitter foods. I mention this to show that my mind is open to reasonable arguments and explanations and I am not knee-jerk refusing to accept natural explanations that are reasonable and not based on imaginary simplistic just-so stories.
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Re. your post about the ape music, I decided to trace back to the story (in The Hindu newspaper) myself and post the link for anyone interested:
Biological heritage
Regarding the idea of music-making as a biological heritage, Dr. Dean Falk of the State University of New York writes in the book cited above, making some interesting points. First, he (sic) points out that music and language are neurologically intertwined.
They appear to have evolved together as brain size increased during the last few million years in the genus homo. Our close cousins of this period, namely the gorilla and the chimpanzee, too seem to have some form of proto-music.
Gorillian chants
While the anatomy of their vocal tracts does not seem to have permitted their acquisition of facile vocal expression (beyond grants and hoots), they seem to manage to hoot and beat together. Two or more male gorillas have been known to vocalise together in a manner that foreshadows human singing without words.
Dr. Schaller, who has researched on this, playfully calls this the Gorillian chants, a forerunner of the Gregorian Chants of medieval Europe.
And the primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall writes that chimpanzees engage in choral pant-hoots and drumming displays. These are non-referential or abstract items, not relative to any specific information transfer but just for fun!* Falk speculates that our ancestor, the Australopithecus, who had vocal tract anatomy and cerebral cortex similar to the chimps, too might have engaged in calls and drumbeats in social and non-referential contests.
hindu.com
*This seems to be the conclusion of the author of the newspaper article.
I see that indeed gibbons and lemurs sing. It seems their songs are territorial vocalizations, like most songbirds songs:
Gibbons: The Singing Apes
Gibbons may be the smallest of the apes, but they have the biggest voices. Their song-like vocalizations are considered one of the marvels of the primate world. Gibbons generally live in monogamous family units consisting of a matched adult pair and their offspring. Gibbons are territorial primates that use their unique vocalizations to "mark" their territory.
cambodiaswildlife.org
The drumming, stamping, and hooting of chimps seems to be a way of communicating messages from the leader to the troop:
On at least 6 occasions, a chimpanzee has been heard drumming or stamping repeatedly and rapidly, sometimes on a tree buttress but most often on the ground, followed by the rest of the individuals in the party promptly descending from the trees and moving in the direction of the drum. In fact, hearing this distinctive form of a drum (not as exhuberant and long-lasting as the tree drums made during the night on tree buttresses) is usually a sign for us that our window of opportunity for an arboreal contact is fast coming to a close. There are several indications that these drums are made by adult males, who thus may be responsible for directing the travel of the group, but this has yet to be confirmed. This behaviour, if indeed it is symbolic communication (‘Come on, ladies, let’s go!’?) is reminiscent of the possibly symbolic tree-drumming behaviour described by Boesch and Boesch-Achermann (2000) of the adult male Tai Forest chimpanzee Brutus.
karlammann.com
A large company of chimps travels through the forest, headed by their fearless leader Brutus. To increase their chance of finding food they break up into several bands, but keep in touch by "pant-hooting" and drumming on resonant trees.
When it is Brutus doing the drumming, however, the other chimps treat the number of drum beats as instructions. One beat means "change direction." Two beats means "rest"--always for between 55 and 65 minutes. A beat on one tree and two on another combines these, instructing the chimps to change direction and then rest. Most remarkably of all, four beats instructs the other bands to rest for two hours.
mathematicalbrain.com
Fascinating. But music?? Imagining that gibbon singing is like human music or that gorilla & chimp panthooting and drumming is like human choirs is a case of over-anthropomorphization, I think. They are marking their territory vocally, just like song-birds, howler monkeys, wolves, hyenas or they are communicating messages about troop movements. I see no reason to think that gibbons or chimps or gorillas make music for the sake of enjoying the music. They're doing practical useful and moderately intelligent things and sometimes the sound strikes sympathetic observers being music-like.
I am underwhelmed. Tracing human music back to gibbon terroritorial singing and chimp hooting is to me far-fetched. If you or others are impressed, that's fine. There's no benefit in taking this any further.
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Of course, the real issue in this conversation isn't music. A similar conversation could be had on the origin of life or the origin of the universe. The real issue is God. Is it reasonable to assert that God had anything at all to do with us being here or is it reasonable to deny it.
It seems to me people have been educated or mis-educated to routinely jump to the conclusion that God had anything to do with anything. I think its why some people leap to assert that people like Chuck Colson is wrong whenever anything is attributed to God's action.
The things we have learned about the universe and life over the past century make the odds of our origin by chance extraordinarily unlikely IMO. Thus the God alternative is today at least as logicalically defensible as the allegedly scientific no-God assumption. |
