Mithen appreciates that musical behaviour may have had more than one
adaptive function---and admits that, at least in homo ergaster (a common
ancestor of both Neanderthals and homo sapiens), 'singing and dancing
may have provided both indicator and aesthetic traits for females when
choosing mates.' However, he disagrees completely with the now
notorious pronouncement by Steven Pinker that music, although derived
from other adaptive capacities, is itself peripheral and even
nonadaptive---like a taste for sugar or fat. Music, says Mithen, is too
different from language to be a spin-off. He makes the further point
that the emotional power of music indicates a long evolutionary history,
not a recent invention aimed at pleasure. 'We don't have emotions for
fun.'
1. Mithen notes that, for an ancestor common to both Neanderthals and