The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.58 (852 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0674025598 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 384 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-12-14 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
The propensity to make music is the most mysterious, wonderful, and neglected feature of humankind: this is where Steven Mithen began, drawing together strands from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience--and, of course, musicology--to explain why we are so compelled to make and hear music. With equal parts scientific rigor and charm, he marshals current evidence about social organization, tool and weapon technologies, hunting and scavenging strategies, habits and brain capacity of all our hominid ancestors, from australopithecines to Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals to Homo sapiens--and comes up with a scenario for a shared musical and linguistic heritage. The result is a fascinating work--and a succinct riposte to those, like Steven Pinker, who have dismissed music as a functionless evolutionary byproduct.. Thus Mithen arrived at the wildly ambitious project that unfolds in this book: an exploration of music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species.Music is the language of emotion, common wisdom tells us. Along the way
From an evolutionary standpoint, music would not only help ensure the well-being of the individual, but also the cohesiveness of the group. M. (Doris Lessing Granta 2008-12-09) . (Laurence A. No one has previously undertaken that task so well. I. Calling on primate studies, Mithen likens group music-making to grooming, an activity that evokes feelings of contentment and belongingTaken as a look at the natural history of music, Mithen's book is thoughtful and certainly entertaining. But according to the first chapter of Mithen's latest work, The Singing Neanderthals, that story was incomplete. Dunbar Times Literary Supplement 2005-07-28)Mithen draws on archaeo
I also love to read a lot of non-fiction and have over From a layman just out for a good read.I spend a lot of my free time actively listening to music. I have a large vinyl record and CD collection acquired since my childhood and I take pride in keeping it well maintain. I only watch an average of 10-12 hour of television per month. So alternatively I listen to music, all kinds of music. I also love to read a lot of non-fiction and have over the past year become interested in paleo-anthropology and our human and societal evolution. While searching "neanderthal" on Amazon I came across this book and obviously I found the title appealing. Wo. I enjoyed reading Mithen's thesis about Neanderthal vocalizations Paula A. Berman I enjoyed reading Mithen's thesis about Neanderthal vocalizations. But in light of recent discoveries about the Neanderthal hyoid bone, we now know that Neanderthals likely had the same speech capabilities as humans. In addition, Neanderthal symbolic representations have come to light, indicating that they were probably cognitively very similar to humans. Still, a good read, but everything about Neanderthals must be re-evaluated in light of recent scientific and anthropological studies about them.. Offering a lot of new ideas The author explains connections of language development to music abilities development. He relates human body development to human mind development. He shows individual growth of a baby and its parents within context of homo sapiens growth. The author understands what archeological excavations meanss, he can interpret rules of language and rules of art expression alltogether within one system, i.e., within human cultural system. Nothing is static here, everything is in move.One of the main topics I took form the book was author's way of discussing Chomsky's generative grammar. For longe
. Steven Mithen is Professor of Early Prehistory and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Reading