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It doesn't handicap them today. I think it would have handicapped them 4000 years ago. There is actual evidence for my theory BTW. Aboriginal folks in Australi
by pygy_ 7y ago
It doesn't handicap them today. I think it would have handicapped them 4000 years ago.
There is actual evidence for my theory BTW. Aboriginal folks in Australia had a tradition of using songs to describe itineraries.
Antique poetry and the bits of oral traditions that survived until today were using heavily structured verses (like the dactylic hexameter). A notable exception is the old testament, whose first parts were transmitted orally before being written down, and which is structured in verses of unknown structure (or unstructured, except for the psalms).
Modern poetry has gradually lost that strong structure. The prevalence of musical anhedonia and amusia may very well have risen in recent times as a result of the loss of utility of music.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia
- nitwit005 7y agoPossibly, but it'd be a fairly minor handicap. Remember that people who don't enjoy music have no problem learning music or instruments, and plenty do. There's no obvious way it would result in your death. We tend to make the mistake of assuming any seeming oddities of the human must somehow be due to evolution. But when we see the same in the rest of the body we often make the opposite assumption and assume it's a vestigial trait, or a coincidence.
- pygy_ 7y agoMy point is that taste in music is vestigial since the invention of writing. Before that it was a selective advantage. Even if amusia (of which musical anhedonia is a subtype) was prevalent at the time, culture transmission operates at the group level. The mere existance of amusia with such a low prevalence doesn't invalidate my point.