Once most of a human society enjoy music, someone could use music to appeal to others in the society and become popular, inspire them, yadda yadda. But in the beginning when the first guy or gal with musical appreciation and talent appear, it would do them no good as their fellows don't care.
You don't need most of society enjoying music, only a subset, and it doesn't have to be enjoyed much more than any other activity, it just has to be an activity some people can share. Benefit from the appreciation of music is not something that turns on when everyone, or a majority appreciate music. Its something that would grow as the extent of the appreciation grows. If only a few care those few might cooperate better and have a competitive advantage over those who don't.
One form of benefit that would hold without widespread enjoyment of music would be as a way to form a group identity. Someone singing your clans simple songs would be recognized as one of you. That type of thing doesn't even have to be something that requires normal biological evolution. One person can invent a song for the tribe, its more an invention than evolution. Once its invented it could lead to cultural evolution which exerts a slight natural selection pressure for enjoyment of such music. Tribes that sing would recognize each other, or form a group identity. Song is certainly not the only method, you might use words, or tattoos, or other things, but song could have been effective, and thus been a survival benefit.
If it wasn't music it could easily have been something else. Even if music had no direct survival value, odds are we will wind up liking something that may not have direct survival, and there is no reason it couldn't be music.
Not being able to explain something naturally is not evidence that it is supernatural. Or is not.
That strikes me as a straw man. Who hear is arguing that music is evidence against supernatural explanations? Certainly not me, I've directly said otherwise, in posts to you. |
