The Origins of Musicality [Response to Ghazanfar & Steingo (2025)]

Ghazanfar and Steingo open their Perspective by asserting that, because no fossil or archaeological record of early music-making exists, modern researchers “rely as much on conjecture as they did in Darwin and Spencer’s time.” This characterization is inaccurate. The evolution of musicality can be reconstructed using methods from comparative biology, genetics, and cross-cultural analyses, empirical domains that were unavailable to Darwin and Spencer. Contact: [email protected]