Human Capacity to Experience Preverbal and Nonverbal Narratives by Means of Music, Song, and Dance

Based upon the field of biomusicology, I first explore direct and indirect evidence on the emergence of the capacity to experience music, and its relation to song and dance. I subsequently ask whether the focus of most previous studies on motor entrainment and emotional responses to the exteroceptive perception of acoustic images can adequately explain the human capacity to experience music, song, and dance. To fully understand this human ability, I propose to also consider the cognitive processes of interoceptive perception, an imaginative triadic system consisting of mental space travel, mental time travel, and mental mind travel; metacognition; and episodic memory. Drawing on cognitive archeology and developmental studies, I finally explore the possible emergence of these cognitive capacities in hominin evolution. I conclude that the degree of these processes present in humans underlies the ability to experience preverbal and nonverbal narratives by means of music, song, and dance—a capacity which seems to have begun to emerge in early hominins. The relations between the emergences of all these processes in both evolution and development remain to be established.