The oldest known musical instruments were found in the caves of Isturitz, in France, and Geissenklösterle, in Germany. It is about flutes made from bird bone dating from about 32,000 years ago. What did the inhabitants of those caves use music for?
There is no way to know because music leaves no lasting traces once it is finished. In spite of everything, we could imagine something like this: a group of primitive humans carries out their daily activities. In the vicinity of the cave, women gather fruits, some with creatures in their arms.
Children play near them. The men watch weapon in hand, before going hunting. A baby cries. His mother sings to reassure him. Distinct sounds are heard: the wind passing between the leaves of the trees, birds, the roar of some feline. Behind a tree, a man plays the flute for a woman. The night falls. In the light of the campfire, the rhythmic pounding of a percussion instrument made of tree bark sounds. An old man monotonously repeats a song that enthralls the group. All dance while playing the bone flutes. The pleasure of the coordinated activity generates an atmosphere of camaraderie that leaves the participants ecstatic.
Some people express their identity through their attire and wear clothes as if they were a business card. Other people are defined by what they read: you can get a lot of information about them by examining the contents of their booksellers. But not everyone gives importance to fashion or reading, nor does he entrust his image to his wardrobe or his library. A more common expression of identity is the music we listen to. If you look like us - and we are almost sure that this is true - among your most personal belongings is your music collection.
We like music for various reasons, but above all, because it inspires emotions, from the wave of abstract pleasure that gives us goosebumps without knowing why, to the nostalgia of the memory that evokes us. So much emotional significance we provide to music that it is easy to get sentimental and not appreciate the enigma that entails.
Charles Darwin expressed it for the first time in 1871, in his treatise on the origin of humans: "Since neither the ability to enjoy nor to produce musical notes have the least use for a man in his daily habits, we must classify them between the most mysterious faculties of which he is endowed. " It is not that Darwin disdained music or the different functions it fulfills (setting for rituals, balm of the soul, a tool for courtship).
The father of evolution refers instead to the fact that it is not at all evident that the musical faculties give us human advantages in the game of survival: they do not serve to defend us from the beasts, nor to hunt our prey; They do not heat our home, they do not help us get water or take care of our crops. From the evolutionary point of view, the origin of music is a mystery.
Most researchers seeking the origin of musical abilities are based on two observed facts and an assumption. The effects observed are that all human societies known to date have music and that artistic skills are manifested from the early stages of children's development. A baby of two months already discriminates between sounds considered pleasant and sounds that are unpleasant for most, as well as being able to remember melodies heard several days before.
From this we can conclude that music is innate: we are born gifted to appreciate it without anyone teaching us. The assumption that we mention is that natural abilities are adaptations in the evolutionary sense of the term -capacities that give the organisms that possess them the highest probabilities of procreating and that, therefore, continue to spread in the population over the generations until there are only individuals with those capabilities. In other words, if evolution has endowed us with musical brains, it must be because music gave our ancestors some advantage in the environment in which they lived.