Language before music – Music before language?
what if…
did you see sound?
could you hear the thought?
Can you smell the right path?
What if it was all about spirals…
It is very likely that human predecessors intuitively appreciated that the world was formed around spirals and responded to the perception of sound in a much more holistic way with their body-mind connection.
Recently (early 2009), little furry mutants in Leipzig started making slightly lower-pitched ultrasonic whistles.
This was the result of an experiment conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The scientists ambitiously created a mouse strain that contains the human variant of a gene called FOXP2.
It is a gene associated with several critical tasks, including the human capacity for language.
Not surprisingly, a recent comparison of those with the new gene in place showed that these mice do, in fact, communicate differently with each other, by using slightly lower-pitched ultrasonic whistles. What’s even more intriguing: Nerve cells growing in one region of the brain show a markedly higher level of complexity than those in the altered mice.
These anthropological explorations may help us better understand what constellation of genes and cultural practices actually underpin language capacity in humans.
As a rehabilitation counselor, who helps restore neuromuscular function, related to physical balance, I see a strong connection between music and human movement and communication. I guess the appreciation of rhythm found in music originated as a survival and training tool to replicate important sounds from everyday life. The role of birds as communicators to aid human and other animal survival is well-documented precedent. Birds warn of a potential threat, sing us to sleep, are linked to cross-cultural spiritual beliefs, and perhaps represent the first earthly rhythmic artists.
The idea that sound manipulation originated to enhance our survival by improving coordinated movement and communication for social interaction, reproduction, teamwork, and danger avoidance is very evident in the development of our brains and neural networks. .
When we measure the emotional response to music, it is primarily the embodiment of “meaning” that is examined, whether the person understands the “meaning” of various audible sounds. This seems, in part, to be transmitted genetically (at least pre-established), familially, and easily learned throughout life.
Having a coherent organic system that links our body to a pre-wired process in the brain (which responds to the sounds and movements we experience throughout life) lends itself to this survival logic.
Vibration, music, rhythm and even echolocation absorption is said to be the first language to reach the body in sensory form. The primordial link of a flourishing social journey that begins in the womb. To appreciate and understand this indivisible truth, at an elemental level, we need only explore the effect of ambient energy (energy being nature’s most basic ordering pattern) in relation to its effect on prenatal babies and its effect on gatherings. community that form the basis of personal identity (in the form of solidarity rituals).
Let’s use the discovery of the world’s first flute as an example.
Excavated from the Hohle Fels cave, about 14 miles southwest of the city of Ulm, by archaeologist Nicholas J. Conard of the University of Tubingen in Germany in 2008, the nearly complete flute implies that the first humans to occupy Europe had quite a sophisticated musical culture. The wing bone of a griffon vulture with five precisely drilled holes is the oldest known musical instrument—a 35,000-year-old relic of early human society—that appears to have contributed to enhanced social cohesion and new forms of individual expression. Communication. Most likely, this indirectly contributed to the demographic expansion of modern humans to the detriment of the culturally more conservative Neanderthals.
Social cohesion goes hand in hand with the dawn of social grouping. Humans initially came together and lived together in a size that is based on faith, trust, and familiarity that intuitively “fits” with the community of human nature. In earlier times, humanity had been, like animals, very strongly connected to group consciousness and acted as a group to survive. This consistency naturally spawned a process of what might be called enhanced and intuitive communication. In nature, hypercommunication has been successfully applied for millions of years to organize dynamic groupings. The organized flow of a school of fish or a flock of birds in flight proves this dramatically. The modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as “intuition”.
However, our original tribal form developed from the kind of personal data mind assistant we carry in our heads that matches “faces to places” and allows us to name a member of our tribe even in unfamiliar surroundings. This is not an archaic process of social formation but a primordial one. Until the most recent in human history, people lived in “tribe-sized” groups and our inclination, even today, constantly reverts us to that comfort zone. For example, it is not an accident of modern literature that the Bard has King Lear removed from the throne but retains 100 knights around him to maintain his sense and persona as ruler of the “royal” community realm. .
While the formation of personal identity is literally half of this social understanding of the evolution of music and language, a vital element of the formation of “community unity” is found in the group embodiment of sound. In order to develop and experience individuality, we humans had to mask, or perhaps more accurately hide, our emerging personality in form and musical expression. Thus it became an imperative of the social gathering (which wished to elicit and guide emotional response) that acoustics and rhythm play an integrating role. These aspects of ambient sound play an indirect social role that resonated in a biosphere to enliven an audience and ultimately reinforce a sense of community. For cross-cultural emphasis, the Renaissance Indian ritual of Astakaliya Kirtan, in which prolonged chanting is accompanied by rhythmic drumming to enchant the participants, is an example.
smell sound
However, movements outside of our audible range are still rhythmic and serve us in the same way as audible sound. We feel movement through our three centers of body balance. All of these systems relate fluid to electrical impulse through the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), skeletal structure, and musculature. It is a complex system that works as a team to provide the correct output for proper stabilization of the body against gravitational forces. Body movements depend on messages to and from the brain’s control room. The brain remembers movement patterns through rhythm, not individual muscle interactions. So even our sense of smell can tell us the direction when it is not clear.
For example, polyvagal theory, the study of the evolution of the human nervous system and the origins of brain structures, assumes that our social behaviors and emotional disturbances are more biological, that is, “hard-wired” into us, than we realize. we normally think think.
The term “polyvagal” combines “poly,” which means “many,” and “vagal,” which refers to the longest bundle of cranial nerves called the vagus (affectionately known as the “vagrant” nerve). To understand the theory, one must have a deeper understanding of the vagus nerve. This nerve is a major component of the autonomic nervous system. The nervous system that you do not control. That makes you do things automatically, like digest your food. The vagus nerve leaves the brain stem and has branches that regulate structures in the head and in various organs, including the heart and colon. The theory proposes that the two different branches of the vagus nerve are related to the unique ways we react to situations that we perceive as safe or unsafe by correctly positioning our bodies to flee or fight. It is significant that this nerve uniquely interacts with the only muscles in the body that are supplied by cranial and spinal nerves around the neck and upper back (sternocleidus and upper trapezius). These muscles also intertwine with the olfactory aspect of the limbic brain to allow us to instinctively turn our heads to sense the direction of potential danger.
Thus, it is easily understood how we perceive sound vibration and movement with our physical body, and that our body can carry out cognitive tasks to support the brain’s multitasking. Using our body in this way helps a specific type of survival intelligence. Particularly since our bodies are prewired to recognize rhythmic patterns, with sensors at each of our joints. This allows us to communicate, think, remember, and perform cognitive tasks in part with our bodies.
