Free rider recognition—A missing link in the Baldwinian model of music evolution

Abstract

The interactions between species-specific predispositions and cultural plasticity in the development of human musical behavior have recently become the rationale for a possible Baldwinian origin of human musicality. In the previously suggested Baldwinian scenarios of music origin, social bonding has been indicated as the crucial adaptive value that became the main cause of the co-evolutionary process that led to our musicality. However, the adaptive value of social bonding does not explain the cultural variability of musical expressions that enabled the Baldwinian evolution of musicality. The main aim of this article is to show that free rider recognition, along with social bonding and signaling commitment, could have been a possible adaptive function of hominin musical rituals. In the proposed scenario, free rider recognition became a “flywheel” of the arms race between deception and cooperation. As a result, the interplay between the canalization and plasticity of musical learning became a part of music evolution. This process created a cultural niche in which hominin vocal learning was specialized in the imitation of discrete pitch and rhythm.