Abstract
Music, like languages, is one of the key components of our culture, yet musical evolution is still poorly known. Numerous studies using computational methods derived from evolutionary biology have been successfully applied to varied subset of linguistic data. One of the major drawback regarding musical studies is the lack of suitable coded musical data that can be analysed using such evolutionary tools. Here we present for the first time an original set of musical data coded in a way that enables construction of trees classically used in evolutionary approaches. Using phylogenetic methods, we test two competing theories on musical evolution: vertical versus horizontal transmission. We show that, contrary to what is currently believed, vertical transmission plays a key role in shaping musical diversity. The signal of vertical transmission is particularly strong for intrinsic musical characters such as metrics, rhythm, and melody. Our findings reveal some of the evolutionary mechanisms at play for explaining musical diversity and open a new field of investigation in musical evolution.
Highlights
For more than a century, a central question has engaged anthropologists interested in the study of cultural evolution: are cultural traits transmitted primarily from ancestral to descendant populations or between neighboring populations, or do they emerge as independent evolution? [1] music is a key component of culture, the question of vertical versus horizontal transmission in music has never been tested
We found that musical data exhibit hierarchy that is best interpreted as a strong phylogenetic signal, suggesting a predominantly vertical transmission of musical characters
We show that intrinsic musical characters have the highest consistency levels and are the most likely to follow a vertical transmission pathway
Summary
For more than a century, a central question has engaged anthropologists interested in the study of cultural evolution: are cultural traits transmitted primarily from ancestral to descendant populations (vertical transmission) or between neighboring populations (horizontal transmission), or do they emerge as independent evolution? [1] music is a key component of culture, the question of vertical versus horizontal transmission in music has never been tested. For more than a century, a central question has engaged anthropologists interested in the study of cultural evolution: are cultural traits transmitted primarily from ancestral to descendant populations (vertical transmission) or between neighboring populations (horizontal transmission), or do they emerge as independent evolution? [1] music is a key component of culture, the question of vertical versus horizontal transmission in music has never been tested. Two studies compared musical and genetic distances among populations. 2013 [2] show that music distances, based on songs, correlate with genetic distances among Taiwan populations. 2012 [3] found such correlation as significant among Eurasian populations. These correlations can occur because of either vertical or horizontal transmissions of both genes and music. Methods developed in evolutionary biology have been successfully applied to cultural data mainly in the field of linguistics [4, 5, 6, 7] and marginally applied
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