The train of people to dancing and lullabies is not innate – scientists

The train of people to dancing and lullabies is not innate – scientists

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For a long time, anthropologists believed that the attraction of people to dancing and lullabies is innate. But the study of the Paraguay’s indigenous people casts doubt on this opinion.

American scientists have found that its representatives have never danced and did not sing children to help them fall asleep.

Results of the study Posted In the Current Biology Scientific Journal, writes The Washington Post.

In it, scientists analyzed the behavior of 800 representatives of the northern Ache – the indigenous people of Paraguay. One of the authors is the anthropologist Kim Hill, who studies their language and culture from the inside since the 1970s.

Over the decades of field research, the scientist has never seen the northern AIs dance or sung lullabies. However, it is likely that such behavior appeared after the end of observations – in 2020.

Researchers say that the songs of the northern Ache are mostly hunting, current events and dead ancestors. They are never aimed at babies.

Also, representatives of the northern ACE never dance – unlike the southern AIs.

Most likely, the reason is that the ancestors of the northern have survived the « bottle throat effect » – a temporary reduction in the population, which is accompanied by a decrease in genetic diversity. During it, they could lose lullaby songs and other cultural aspects.

The northern Ace has less genetic diversity than most other indigenous Americans. Settlements in reservations and population decrease through epidemics and violent export of children have led to « demographic upheavals ».

Although cultural knowledge of ancestors’ ability to produce fire have been preserved, modern northern Ace is not able to do it and support an existing hearth. They probably lost this skill after split with the southern AIs in the early nineteenth century.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that people should learn to dance and sing lullaby, and then « adjust and culturally convey » such behavior to posterity.

« This does not refute the possibility that people genetically adapted to dance and reaction to lullabies. However, the fact that cultural transmission is much more important to maintain such behavior, many scientists, including me, suspected me, » – said the co -author of the study, anthropologist Manvir Singh.

Recall, scientists Find outthat music can change the emotional tone of memories.