Abstract
We present, to our knowledge, the first quantitative evidence that music and genes may have coevolved by demonstrating significant correlations between traditional group-level folk songs and mitochondrial DNA variation among nine indigenous populations of Taiwan. These correlations were of comparable magnitude to those between language and genes for the same populations, although music and language were not significantly correlated with one another. An examination of population structure for genetics showed stronger parallels to music than to language. Overall, the results suggest that music might have a sufficient time-depth to retrace ancient population movements and, additionally, that it might be capturing different aspects of population history than language. Music may therefore have the potential to serve as a novel marker of human migrations to complement genes, language and other markers.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 20132386 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
| Volume | 281 |
| Issue number | 1774 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2013 Nov 13 |
Keywords
- Coevolution
- Genes
- Language
- Music
- Population structure
- Taiwan
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
- Immunology and Microbiology(all)
- Environmental Science(all)
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)