The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body [Paperback]

Fear not, dear reader. I'm not making the sounds of indecision. Nor have I forgotten the words to my local national anthem. Instead, those sets of letters are acronyms. Steven Mithen uses them to typify the foundations of our ability to communicate in our distant past. The letters stand for "Holistic, "multi-modal", "manipulative", and "musical". With the addition of "mimetic", he uses the collective phrase to explain why "music" in this broadly defined sense, preceded the development of language and grammar in our species. He also explains the "how" of this phenomenon, which is what gives this book its real value.

Mithen's previous works are a foundation for this one, although he openly admits that the phenomenon of music eluded him in them. He makes up for that oversight with a detailed examination of fossil and genetic information to support his thesis. As humans fluent in the use of speech, with its lexicons and syntax, we've become blinded to our true roots. We rush children through infancy, overlooking the process we use in communicating with those who lack words and their meanings. Mithen says this period is critical - both because its universality among cultures should tell us something about our past, and because a better understanding of the communication process can lead to smarter and healthier children. Who, among the mothers we know, fails to "sing" to their newborn?

In Mithen's view, that childhood communication method repeats what our African ancestors did with each other prior to the development of language. Words, in our time, are representative. They "mean" something - an object, an event, a lesson. In those early days, emotions, especially the basic ones of fear, flight, fight or feed, were the only significant topics. Music, he reminds us, is the language of emotion, whether it be lullabies to children or a Mozart aria. Newborns are particularly receptive to music or rhythmic sounds and gestures, especially when they're synchronised [hence "multi-modal"]. Newborns can't understand the words mothers use, but they comprehend the "message" [the "holistic" part].

The author explains how studies in brain activity associated with speech and music have given us great insight to the mind's processing of information. Where and when did these talents emerge? Mithen builds his thesis with careful detail, noting how our gaining a bipedal stature did more than distinguish us from the other apes. A range of body changes modified our method of movement, hand manipulation and breathing. It also impinged on our voices. The Early Humans, as Mithen broadly characterises the Homo genus, developed a range of sounds, with various pitches and volumes. The best way to use these new-found talents was in a musical manner and for a variety of circumstances.

Although nearly half the book must be consumed to reach the title's topic, the background is necessary for a full understanding. Homo neanderthalis, with its larger brain and stockier body than Homo sapiens, struggled for survival in Ice Age Europe. Even in the face of such stress, Neanderthal society remained doggedly static. The kinds of innovation speech might have spurred aren't found. Neanderthal excavation sites easily outnumber those of early Homo sapiens' digs in Africa, our original home. Yet in all those digs, nothing is found that would suggest the need for language. Jewellry only appears very late, probably introduced by Homo sapiens invading from Africa. And that invader brought a new talent in its armoury - language and symbolic representation. Which likely led, in Mithen's view, to our being the sole remaining Homo species.

Mithen isn't offering us wild speculation plucked from offhand supposition. Although he notes the interest in music as an evolutionary prompter is only beginning, his presentation rests on solid evidence. Support comes from Alison Wray - who suggested the term "holistic" and from Simon Kirby of Edinburgh University. Kirby applies computer modelling to show how recursive feedback reinforces word development in proto-languages. Indeed, it's noteworthy that Mithen's Notes section comprises a quarter of the book. There's one glaring error - genes aren't made of amino acids, they're comprised of codons. Editors and proofreaders are still catching up with the sciences, so we may forgive Mithen this small lapse. We'd better, since this ground-breaking book will lead to much discussion and likely no little acrimony in exchanges. That's good, because he has overturned a number of dogmas needing shedding. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

You can tell the ambitious scope of this book by its subtitle: "the origins of music, language, mind, and body." Wow! Is that all? Actually, the task the author sets out to do isn't as vast as one might at first suppose because they are seen as related in the way early hominids arose and then evolved further. Steven Mithen is less concerned with the origin of music than the way in which the homo sapiens mind differed from its ancestors and the then contemporary hominids.

But before I get to my attempt at summarizing what Mithen says about these matters, I want to address something else. The speculative stories that professional anthropologists and archaeologists tell have a very different meaning to them than they end up meaning for the general public and there is some small danger in that difference. Science professionals are all aware of the raw evidence and the context and conjecture surrounding each piece. There are always ambiguities and tentative "conclusions" arrived at by one authority or another and they often conflict. However, to make sense of a broad collection of data a story is created as a kind of summary of what is known at that time.

These stories are always fragile as art glass. But they can be a useful way of organizing what is known and if new evidence found fits within the model it is strengthened. However, it is known that any new evidence found might undo a part of the story or overthrow it altogether. The problem is that the general reader doesn't know the evidence and has no idea of its context. Such a reader is unlikely to read broadly enough to gain some sense of the strength of such a story and whether its speculation is more mainstream or something radical.

Whether the story is fairly constructed from the evidence, or is highly skewed in its presentation and is in fact untrustworthy cannot be known by the casual reader. Yet the story becomes the way the general reader is likely to discuss the topic, as if the story were fact. This can actually impede understanding rather than help because it freezes things in the reader's mind because work continues in the field and the story may be overthrown rather quickly. The author actually mentions this kind of effect when discussing the Divje Babe I "flute" which is more likely a bone bitten into by a bear than a flute. But in the popular imagination it remains a flute.

I am certainly not qualified to judge the evidence presented in this book nor any of the authors speculations or conclusions. What I can say is that the author tells his story well, is quite interesting, and does present the ambiguities of the evidence and various sides on many of the issues he discusses. I think such openness and fair-mindedness is a good sign even while one is advocating for a particular point of view.

Mithen's thrust in this book (if I understand it correctly) is that as early hominids developed into upright narrow-hipped creatures certain biological adaptations accompanied these developments that allowed homo ergaster and homo neanderthalensis and homo heidelbergensis and all the later hominids to make more flexible sounds than other related creatures. We can see the extension of those differences as we look at what the apes and monkeys do with "song" versus humans. (It is essential when reading this book when reading the words music and song to maintain the rudimentary nature of what he is describing versus the pieces by Bach, Brubeck, and Miles Davis that he refers to occasionally.) The author sees the sources of rhythm and music within the nature of our bodies and the way it moves and the sounds we are able to make because of our high larynx and flexible throat and mouth. I think this is exactly right.

But isn't this getting a bit ahead of the story? Surely language came before singing and dance? The author says no and his explanation is the main story of this book and is quite fascinating. There are two broad divisions about the rise of language. The first is the one most of us would have intuitively expected, that language started with one or two semi-grunted words and slowly evolved into Shakespeare. This is the compositional school. The other, that I had known nothing of until I read this book and am now quite persuaded by (see how being ignorant in the face of a great story teller can draw one in?) is known as the holistic development of speech.

In the holistic view, early hominids made certain calls that were not symbolic and contained whole meetings in the single utterance. One call might mean "give that to her" and another might mean "beware of the bear over there". But they were not words in our sense and could not be used to develop new phrases or sentences. They could not compose as we do. These calls rose out of the way early hominids, had to care for their young and can even be seen in remnant in our Infant Directed Speech and our penchant for phrases that we say without thinking or meaning, but preserve a function (such as "Howareyoudoing" "Iamfine"). He calls this early form of verbalization with the surprising acronym "Hmmmmm", which stands for Holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musical, and mimetic.

The Neanderthals referred to in the title lived tough lives. The author believes that all the evidence available about them shows they lived short (about 35 years) hard lives. He thinks they had a "domain intelligence". That is, their brains were capable of doing certain things like making fire or making and using tools, but did not have the interconnections and mental fluidity that developed in homo sapiens. They did not paint on walls, they did not make huts, and the author believes they could not speak in words. They used holistic song and dance to communicate, comfort their young, and develop interpersonal connectedness that strengthened their tribes.

Neanderthals were always on the precarious edge of survival and when homo sapiens showed up they disappeared. Mithen assures us that our ancestors didn't slaughter them to extinction, but offers no evidence for this. To me it sounds like a kind of political correctness borne of modern sensibilities against wanton killing. But I don't believe there is evidence one way or the other.

This book covers a great deal of ground that I can't even summarize here. It is worth reading for its valuable content and is also enjoyable if you like anthropology. As a musician, I did find his explanations of music a bit weak, but they made more sense as he developed his thesis. However, if you are looking for the explanation of how Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven came to be, you won't find it here. This is much more basic and about how the raw musical potential came to be.

I am reminded of the cartoon of a detailed equation on a blackboard that is labeled in various steps. Two scientists are standing in front of step two which says "and then a great miracle occurs" and one says to the other "I think you need to flesh out this step a bit more". It isn't that Mithen has left anything out for his story, but that for music to become something more than communal folk singing to the high art of Western Culture does require something more than the dismissal of such music as "elite" implying that it is somehow a prejudice not worthy of serious examination.

But that is beside the point. If you are interested in the development of early hominids, you will likely learn things from this book. If you want to learn about the holistic view of language development, this is a fine explanation. If you want to know more about how and when Neanderthals lived and how Homo Sapiens arose and filled the earth, this is a fine explanation. If you want to know about the differences in our musical potential versus other creatures in nature and what adaptations had to take place for that to happen, this is fascinating stuff.

So, recommended and enjoy!

Starts slow, but soon zooms along. Before you know it, you're in the midst of a fascinating story about monkey calls, baby babbling, opera and rock, and the weird, wired harmonies that cascade through the human nervous system when people engage in speech and song. Then, halfway through the book, using the information of the first half as a lens to bring the second half into focus, the author leads you on a trip from the darkest depths of hominid prehistory to the dawn of homo sapien culture, developing, as he goes, a theory about the origins of oral communication and music. The wonder of the book is not the theory, but the author's protean curiosity and delightful talent for explanation and synthesis. He weaves together strands of thought from all sorts of different disciplines to create an argument so lively and thought provoking that it doesn't matter if it's right. You come away full of ideas that seem to apply to almost everything you see. The book is a lovely, multi-layered intellectual tune, which makes you hummmm with thought as you turn each page.