Ancient Lights, Ancient Lays

Steven Mithen's latest book is 'The Singing Neanderthals' [Orion, h/b, 0-297-64317-7] and is divided into two parts, a study of the way the brain processes music and language today, followed by a well-argued theory of how music and language may have evolved from a common 'proto-language'. He supports the theory of Alison Wray that such a language was 'holistic', meaning that instead of individual words and grammatical rules it was constructed of phrases that could not be broken down into smaller components. He uses the example 'abracadbra', commonly meaning 'let magic happen', but not divisible to those specific components, and argues convincingly that such holistic calls, together with body-language and intonation, would have sufficed to give our ground-dwelling ancestors an evolutionary advantage. The holistic vs grammatical argument is hotly debated in academic circles: not being an academic I'm free to pick the one that works for me and for the moment, holistic is it.

Also presented at 'Language, Poetry and the Brain' were some new studies (still being refereed for publication) of areas of the brain used for processing language and music. It was a bit about my own brain function that I posted the next morning:

    a study of trained musicians shows that when they watch a film of
    a pianist playing, without any sound, the area used for auditory
    processing of music lights up, just as if they were hearing the piano.
    This happens even when the panist's fingers are held above the keys
    rather than actually playing them.

    So now I know what happens when I'm 'reading' the chords from John G's
    box to work out what descant I can play when there's noise like at the
    brickworks last weekend. Some part of my brain is 'hearing' him play
    and can therefore harmonise with him.

but it was the comparisons and contrasts between brain functions when processing music and language that ultimately got me going. Work continues, but it appears that neither functionis a subset of the other, lending credence to Mithin's hypothesis that language and music both evolved from the proto-language of our far ancestors.