The origins of the field can be traced back to Charles Darwin who wrote in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex: When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes,—would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph,—and would have served as a challenge to rivals.
It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions.
Two major topics for any subfield of evolutionary psychology are the adaptive function (if any) and phylogenetic history of the mechanism or behavior of interest including when music arose in human ancestry and from what ancestral traits it developed.
[4][5][6] Adaptation, on the other hand, is highlighted in hypotheses such as the one by Edward Hagen and Gregory Bryant which posits that human music evolved from animal territorial signals, eventually becoming a method of signaling a group's social cohesion to other groups for the purposes of making beneficial multi-group alliances.
Predictable locomotion sounds may have improved our capacity of entrainment, which is the synchronization of behavior of different organisms by a regular beat.
A sense of rhythm could aid the brain in distinguishing among sounds arising from discrete sources and also help individuals to synchronize their movements with one another.
Synchronization of group movement may improve perception by providing periods of relative silence and by facilitating auditory processing.
[10][11] The adaptive value of such skills to early human ancestors may have been keener detection of prey or stalkers and enhanced communication.
The noise generated by the locomotion of two or more individuals can result in a complicated mix of footsteps, breathing, movements against vegetation, echoes, etc.
A primarily survival-based behavior may eventually have attained similarities to dance and music, due to such reinforcement mechanisms.
[15] "Musilanguage" is a term coined by Steven Brown to describe his hypothesis of the ancestral human traits that evolved into language and musical abilities.
Similarly, speaking very rapidly often creates a frenzied effect that mirrors that of a fast and agitated musical passage.
Joseph Jordania has suggested that music (as well as several other universal elements of contemporary human culture, including dance and body painting) was part of a predator control system used by early hominids.
[18] Apart from the defense from predators, Jordania suggested that this system was the core strategy to obtain food via confrontational, or aggressive scavenging.
Many social animals produce seemingly haphazard and indistinctive sounds (like chicken cluck) when they are going about their everyday business (foraging, feeding).