Human musicality (the capacity to make and appreciate music) is difficult to explain in evolutionary terms, though many theories attempt to do so. This paper focuses on musicality's potential adaptive precursors, particularly as related to rhythm. It suggests that pace setting for walking and running long distances over extended time periods (endurance locomotion, EL) is a good candidate for an adaptive building block of rhythmic musicality. The argument is as follows: (1) over time, our hominin lineage developed a host of adaptations for efficient EL; (2) the ability to set and maintain a regular pace was a crucial adaptation in the service of EL, providing proximate rewards for successful execution; (3) maintaining a pace in EL occasioned hearing, feeling, and attending to regular rhythmic patterns; (4) these rhythmic patterns, as well as proximate rewards for maintaining them, became disassociated from locomotion and entrained in new proto-musical contexts. Support for the model and possibilities for generating predictions to test it are discussed.

中文翻译：

---

节奏设定作为节奏音乐性的适应性先驱

人类的音乐性（创作和欣赏音乐的能力）很难用进化的术语来解释，尽管许多理论试图这样做。本文重点关注音乐性的潜在适应性前兆，特别是与节奏相关的前兆。它表明，长时间步行和长距离跑步（耐力运动，EL）的配速设置是节奏音乐性自适应构建块的良好候选者。论据如下：（1）随着时间的推移，我们的古人类谱系发展出了一系列高效的 EL 适应能力；(2) 设定和保持正常节奏的能力是 EL 服务中的一项重要适应能力，为成功执行提供直接奖励；(3) 在 EL 中保持听觉、感觉的节奏，并注意有规律的节奏模式；（4）这些节奏模式，以及维持它们的直接奖励，与运动脱节，并被纳入新的原始音乐背景中。讨论了对该模型的支持以及生成预测以对其进行测试的可能性。