In 2001, a flute believed to have been made by Neanderthals was discovered in France. The date of the instrument, which was quite sophisticated for the technology of the time, has revealed that it was made about 53,000 years ago. It is twice as old as the Lascaux cave paintings, which are known as the first paintings of mankind.
How humans came to make and enjoy music is still a veil. Charles Darwin, who established the foundations of the theory of evolution, argued for the ‘sexual conflict theory’ as part of courtship as to the origins of music. Some scholars claim the ‘collective labor theory’ that music was created for the purpose of better expression and communication during hunting or collective labor in primitive times.
A study has found that the songs of the lemur Indry have characteristics similar to those found in human music. ©Filippo Carugati
There is also the ‘infant song theory’ that the cries of mammals seeking milk with their mother developed into music. In addition, there are many different hypotheses about the origin of music, such as the theory of the origin of signals, the theory of the origin of entertainment, and the theory of religion in witchcraft.
Singing birds share a human sense of rhythm, but it is very rare to find animals with such traits in mammals. However, Indri Indri, a lemur native to Madagascar, starts the morning with a mysterious song such as a howl.
At about 1 m tall, the indri, the largest extant lemur, is a singing primate and an endangered species.
Two rhythm patterns found in human music
Researchers from the University of Turin, Italy, have been visiting the rainforests of Madagascar in collaboration with a local Primate Research Group for 12 years to study whether Indri’s song has a universal rhythm found throughout human musical culture.
Because Indries live deep in the rainforest, they had to spend years tracking them in the forest to gather their songs. As a result, the researchers recorded 39 songs from 20 independent groups, resulting in 636 recordings.
Dr. Andrea Ravignani’s team at the Max Planck Institute in Germany analyzed the song files with a spectrogram that visualizes and grasps sounds or waves. As a result, the researchers found that Indrey’s song had two rhythm patterns found in human music.
One was a rhythm in which each note was evenly spaced 1:1, and the other was a rhythm in which the interval between notes was twice as long as the previous one in a 1:2 ratio. The rhythm of these two patterns is also featured in the song ‘We will rock you’ by the rock group Queen, which is famous for the ‘singing’ that all the audience sang along with.
At about 1 m tall, the indri, the largest extant lemur, is a singing primate and an endangered species. ©Filippo Carugati
The researchers also found that Indri’s songs had a musical characteristic that slowed them down, like the typical ‘ritardando’ (a musical term for playing slowly) found in many traditional music. The researchers say this is the first time such rhythmic universality has been found in non-human mammals.
As a result of further analysis, it was found that the songs sung by male and female Indri all had the same rhythm but different tempo. In other words, the male Indrey produced the middle note longer and faster than the female. Singing requires considerable energy, as males are physically stronger than females.
The results of this study were published in the international journal ‘Current Biology’ on October 25th.
It is believed to have evolved for long-distance communication and territorial defense.
Researcher Chiara de Gregorio of the University of Turin, the first author of the study, said, “Musicality is not limited to humans. makes it possible,” he said.
So far, songs with a clear rhythm have been identified only in birds such as the golden bird other than humans. The researchers do not know exactly why the lemur Indry developed this unique talent, but they believe it evolved for long-distance communication and territorial defense.
The last common ancestor between humans and indri must date back 77.5 million years ago. Therefore, the discovery of human musical characteristics in Indri may mean that the origins of music are much older than expected.
The next research task, the researchers say, is to find out whether Indri knew how to sing from birth or if it was a skill they learned through practice. Maybe Indrey will tell you about the origins of the music, which has remained a mystery.
However, the researchers have one concern. To study the singing skills of an endangered species like Indri, we need to collect data before it’s too late.
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