Details

ISBN-10: 1890951528
ISBN-13: 9781890951528
Publisher: Zone Books
Publish Date: 10/30/2018
Dimensions: 8.90" L, 5.90" W, 1.00" H

A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity

Paperback

Price: $22.95

Overview

What is the origin of music? In the last few decades this centuries-old puzzle has been reinvigorated by new archaeological evidence and developments in the fields of cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary theory. In this path-breaking book, renowned musicologist Gary Tomlinson draws from these areas to construct a new narrative for the emergence of human music.

Starting at a period of human pre_history long before Homo sapiens or music existed, Tomlinson describes the incremental attainments that, by changing the communication and society of prehuman species, laid the foundation for musical behaviors in more recent times. He traces in Neanderthals and early sapiens the accumulation and development of these capacities, and he details their coalescence into modern musical behavior across the last hundred millennia.

But A Million Years of Music is not about music alone. Tomlinson builds a model of human evolution that revises our understanding of the interaction of biology and culture across evolutionary time-scales, challenging and enriching current models of our deep history. As he tells his story, he draws in other emerging human traits: language, symbolism, a metaphysical imagination and the ritual it gives rise to, complex social structure, and the use of advanced technologies. Tomlinson’s model of evolution allows him to account for much of what makes us a unique species in the world today and provides a new way of understanding the appearance of humanity in its modern form.

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Reviews

This is interdisciplinarity at the deepest level, not merely a surface-level engagement with passing trends in other fields. ... A Million Years of Music is a crucial work which provides a fresh perspective on an old problem. It is, in many ways, the ultimate rebuttal of Steven Pinker's glib dismissal of music as a disposable pleasure stimulus. ... Written with passion and great erudition, it demonstrates music's role as an essential part of human identity, rivaling speech.

MAKE Literary Magazine
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Details

ISBN-10: 1890951528
ISBN-13: 9781890951528
Publisher: Zone Books
Publish Date: 10/30/2018
Dimensions: 8.90" L, 5.90" W, 1.00" H
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