The Origin of Music

the simple answer is sexual selection, just as music is part of mating of many animals, especially birds.See "Review of Sexual Selection and Human Evolution"
Department of Psychology | The University of New Mexico There are other references available as well.Sexual selection could also be the reason for our larger brain. Notice that a lot of courtship occurs on dance halls to music and that performers, especially singers are held in high regard, more so by those of prime mating ages.enjoy.ps - your argument reduces to "I like music, I like to explain things as being done by God, other than that I have no evidence for my concept."

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

seems you missed the bit about sexual selection factors as opposed to survival factors. obviously pure survival of the fittest cannot explain peacock feathers, while sexual selection makes it obvious. song and dance are similar, and certainly linked to sexual selection if you watch MTV.in fact it may well be the human use of song and dance rituals, developed originally for mating selection, that have caused the propensity for religions as a side effect of the trance states that can be induced. there are several references in evoloutionary psychology that talk about this, the link I had is no longer working.the object is to survive to breed, and if no breeding takes place survival doesn't matter does it? (and if you think man is above the need to evolve immunity to diseases then stop taking any vacines.)As for altruism, which is off topic, that is explained many ways. Try Game Theory and John Nash -- the man behind "A Beautiful Mind" -- what was his Nobel Prize for?enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

also consider buddhist monks, especially the tibetan ones with their tonal chants using resonance to be able to create different notes at the same time (if you haven't heard it, this can be really spooky the first time).do a google on {evolutionary psychology music mating} and you will probably find lots of links to wade through. One I found was:Sorry, we could not find that!

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Do you have documentation of that? or is it just an assertion? Do you know for a fact that tribes had rituals for respective gods before they had mating?Interesting that we both chose MTV as examples, both linking it to sex: you to satanic immoral behavior and me for natural selection of mates.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

You miss the point of sexual selection. Why do only Peacocks have such large fancy tails? It is because of feedback sexual selection causing an attribute to evolve more than it needs to for any other purpose. Such feedback selection can easily turn hoots into harmony, movement into dance and body painting into art.Next, it is, of course, not monkeys that are the most recent common non-human ancestor but an ape from which we humans, chimpanzees and bonobos apes descended.And finally, a statement is an argument, as used in debates, for it states a position.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

But it does, because it involves a feedback over many generations rather than the all-at-once development that you imply. Those peacock tail feathers did not happen in one generation.Certainly the composition of music has evolved, not just in historical times (classical music) but in contemporary times (Dave Brubeck, Take Five and other works in different tempos) ... jazz is nothing but an evolution of music . To assume modern sensibility in first origins is fallacious: one would do better to look into more primitive music and instruments.One could argue that as soon as instruments were used that harmonics were discovered, forming as they do the natural (based on the physics of sound) basis for all known historic musical scales.enjoy

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}