Synchronous Chorusing and Human Origins

By Bjorn H. Merker. 2000

242 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Cultural Studies, Developmental Biology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/75c2abcae7edb75417e3c4aae8bfb2cf592d0038

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Citations in the corpus

The Evolution of Consciousness as a Planetary Imperative: An Integration of Integral Views (2007, result): “This is supported by recent research into the origins of music and language (Dissanayake, 2005; Merker, 2001; Mithen, 2007; Skoyles, 2000; Wallin, Merker, & Brown, 2001).”
Joint music making promotes prosocial behavior in 4-year-old children☆☆☆ (2010, background): “The idea that music originally evolved as a display signal was also put forward by Merker (2000), who proposed that synchronous chorusing by hominid males served as an indicator of coalition strength, helping to defend territory and at the same time attract migrating females.”
Universals in the world’s musics (2013, background): “Animals that do show synchrony in their calling (e.g., certain species of insects and frogs; see Merker, 2000) are generally solo singers that have monotonic calls involving repetitive use of a single pitch.”
Did Neanderthals and other early humans sing? Seeking the biological roots of music in the territorial advertisements of primates, lions, hyenas, and wolves (2009, background): “Music is often performed in circumstances, such as funerals, that have little directly to do with mating; it is frequently directed towards adult members of the same sex (as well as infants and children), whereas mating signals should almost always be directed towards adolescent and adult members of”
If music is the food of love, what about survival and reproductive success? (2008, background): “Further development of this neurohormonal substrate could have laid the evolutionary ground for emotional and physical entrainment (Brown, 2000; Merker, 2000), thus fostering the creation of feelings of social bonding and even altered states that are experienced as transformative (Freeman, 2000; Oub”
Perception and Production of Syncopated Rhythms (2007, background): “Imitation of rhythms, or entrainment to an external pulse are both complex sensorimotor abilities, with few parallels in animal behavior (Fitch, 2006, Merker, 2000).”
Shamanism as the Original Neurotheology (2004, background): “Bjorn Merker (2000) reviews evidence that humans’ ancient hominid ancestors engaged in synchronous group singing, found chimpanzee groups, where it provides an emotional communication integration (see Winkelman 2002).”
Music, biological evolution, and the brain (2010, background): “Merker (2000), in contrast, draws on observations of chimpanzee group vocal displays and theorizes that music may have originated in our ancestors from synchronous calls aimed at mate attraction (see also Merker et al., 2009).”
Synchrony as an Adaptive Mechanism for Large-Scale Human Social Bonding (2016, unknown): “When engaging in chorused activities, all-male bands of several species appear to be able to attract females to their group due to the quality of the display (e.g. Merker 2000).”
Musical Rhythm, Linguistic Rhythm, and Human Evolution (2006, background): “Indeed, hypotheses about the adaptive value of BPS have been offered in evolutionary theorizing about human music (e.g., Merker, 2000).”
Infants Perception of Rhythmic Patterns (2006, background): “, Hulse, Humpal, & Cynx, 1984), the ability to entrain to an external timekeeper or keep a steady beat seems to be uniquely human (Brown, Merker, & Wallin, 2000; Geissmann, 2000; Merker, 2000).”
The evolutionary nature of musical meaning (2009, unknown): “This view of the function of entrainment in musical contexts is quite different from that proposed by Merker (2000); he suggests that a capacity for entrainment may have emerged in the hominid lineage because of its signalling advantages for sexual selection at…”
Did sexual selection shape human music? Testing predictions from the sexual selection hypothesis of music evolution using a large genetically informative sample of over 10,000 twins (2015, background): “…have been developed in recent years, such as enhancing parent and child bonding (Dissanayake, 2008), promotion of mental and social development (Cross, 2007), increasing social cohesion (Merker, 2000), or play beneficial to cognitive functions (music resulting from exaptation; Honing, 2011).”
THE ORIGINS OF MUSIC: INNATENESS, UNIQUENESS, AND EVOLUTION (2005, background): “Many have suggested that music might be a biological adaptation, with functions ranging from courtship to social cohesion in group activities such as religion and war (e.g., Darwin, 1871; Merker, 2000; Miller, 2001; Cross, 2001; Huron, 2001; Hagen & Bryant, 2003).”
Joint Drumming in Brazilian and German Preschool Children (2014, background): “…to solve a reproductive or survival problem in our ancestral environment, for example, as a means to maximize the amplitude of a group signal (Merker, 2000); as a way of signaling coalition strength between groups (Hagen & Bryant, 2003); or as a practice of establishing expectation and…”