Where does music come from? How did musical capacities develop? When did they emerge? What roles did they play in human and prehuman adaptation?

Penn musicologist and PHF Origins topic director Gary Tomlinson describes the scientific debates surrounding the origins of music and new lines of evidence suggesting its crucial place in human evolution.

Gary Tomlinson, a former MacArthur Fellow, is the author of many books and articles on topics ranging from Renaissance music to jazz, including Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance; Metaphysical Song: An Essay on Opera; Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others; and Music and Historical Critique: Selected Essays. His most recent book, The Singing of the New World: Indigenous Voice in the Era of European Contact, explores the place of singing for the ancient Aztecs and Incas.