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Presumably music is an essential part of human evolution or it wouldn’t be there, but why?
Ros Groves
Watford, Hertfordshire, UK
The evolution of music is an elusive yet tantalising subject as, unlike skeletons, sounds don’t leave fossilised remains. The oldest known musical instrument is a 40,000-year-old flute made from bird bone, which predates the earliest known examples of written language by thousands of years, suggesting that music may have preceded language.
Fast rhythmic clapping and banging of sticks along with high-pitched howling could have been used by primitive communities in a form of “war rehearsal”, symbolising readiness for…
