History
The origins of the field can be traced back to Charles Darwin who wrote in his Descent of Man:
- "When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes,--would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph,--and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions."
This theory of a musical protolanguage has been revived and re-discovered repeatedly, often without attribution to Darwin.
Read more about this topic: Evolutionary Musicology
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