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Published on: November 26, 2012
Knowledge songs as an evolutionary adaptation to facilitate information transmission through music
1Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute,San Francisco, CA94103, USAdlevitin@minerva.kgi.edu; www.daniellevitin.com.
Abstract:
I propose an adjunct to the two models presented in the target articles, a function of music that is ubiquitous and would have solved a clear adaptive problem, that of transmitting important survival information among pre-literate humans. This class of knowledge songs uniquely preserved cultural, botanical, medical, safety, and practical information that increased the adaptive fitness of societies.
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