Evolution of Human Musicality: the Memory Modulation Theory

The evolutionary basis for the development of music in humans has been an enduring mystery. The theory presented here posits that musicality evolved in humans by conferring direct fitness benefits by enabling hominid communicators to influence the persistence of memories of information communicated to other hominids via a musical “coding” process. This ability provided increasing adaptive advantages as the plasticity of hominid behaviors increased. Seen from this general communications-theoretic perspective, musicality can actually be defined as just that set of acousticalbased coding protocols that hominids developed to more effectively modulate memories. This theory also has important implications beyond the specifics of hominid evolution to more generalized animal, as well as artificial, communications environments.