num_pages: 374
description: A long overdue book... intriguing as well as entertaining - Times Literary SupplementAlong with the concepts of consciousness and intelligence, our capacity for language sits right at the core of what makes us human. But while the evolutionary origins of language has provoked speculation and debate, music has been neglected if not ignored.In The Singing Neanderthals, Steven Mithen redresses the balance, drawing on a huge range of sources, from neurological case studies, through child psychology and the communications systems of non-human primates to the latest paleoarcheological work - a succinct riposte to those who have dismissed music as a functionless and unimportant evolutionary by-product.Mithen's rich, dispassionate study of music, language and mime goes back to music-making among primates as the basis for understanding what role music might play in the human mind - Evening Standard
language: English
title: The Singing Neanderthals
titlecomplete: The Singing Neanderthals
genres: History, Anthropology, Science, Archaeology, Prehistory, Music, Language, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Evolution
ratings_count: 613
publisher: Phoenix