The music never stopped. From discussion at the New York Academy of Sciences covered in the Globe and Mail. Was the development of music an individual biological adaptation that helped endowed members of the species survive, evolutionarily selected for and genetically encoded? Several bits of evidence point that way, some argue. Music is universal, in all human cultures. The age of the oldest archaeological evidence of musical instruments suggests its extremely early development in human evolution. Lullabies are universal; maybe happy contented infants have a survival advantage if sung to. Musical ability might make one more attractive to potential mates, viz. the way pop stardom and sexuality are intertwined. Tribal bonding through music is such an innately powerful experience; the survival advantages of group cohesion are obvious. But others feel that this is little different from other cultural developments like writing and visual art — cultural but not biological adaptations. ‘ “As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless,” (Steven) Pinker wrote in

his 1997 book How the Mind Works. “Compared with language, vision, social reasoning

and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle

would be virtually unchanged.” ‘