The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body.THE SINGING NEANDERTHALS: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body STEVEN MITHEN Mothers sing to their children. People chant chant, general name for one-voiced, unaccompanied, liturgical music. Usually it refers to the liturgical melodies of the Byzantine, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican churches and is analogous to cantillation in Jewish liturgical music, Qur'anic chanting together in rituals. Like language, music is a universal means of emotional expression. Although music is ubiquitous, its origins have been neglected or flat-out ignored by anthropologists and others studying the human mind and its evolution, contends Mithen, a professor of early prehistory prehistory, period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to . He dismisses the idea that music is just a spin-off The situation that arises when a parent corporation organizes a subsidiary corporation, to which it transfers a portion of its assets in exchange for all of the subsidiary's capital stock, which is subsequently transferred to the parent corporation's shareholders. of the human capacity for language. He asserts instead that music is the key to language's evolution. The first portion of the book describes how music and language are processed in the brain. It intro duces music savants and people lacking all musical ability, a condition called amusia. Other passages examine how musiclike tones and inflections aid infants' language acquisition. Finally, Mithen turns to evolution for clues to how vocalizations became communication. An examination of apes and even the fossil record reveals how music played a role in that process, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. this treatise A scholarly legal publication containing all the law relating to a particular area, such as Criminal Law or Land-Use Control. Lawyers commonly use treatises in order to review the law and update their knowledge of pertinent case decisions and statutes. . Harvard, 2005, 384 p., flardcover, $29.95. |
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