Cultural macroevolution of musical instruments in South America

Gabriel Aguirre-Fernández, Chiara Barbieri, Anna Graff, José Pérez de Arce, Hyram Moreno and Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra ()
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Gabriel Aguirre-Fernández: University of Zurich
Chiara Barbieri: University of Zurich
Anna Graff: University of Zurich
José Pérez de Arce: Universidad de Chile
Hyram Moreno: Museo de Ciencias Naturales
Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra: University of Zurich

Palgrave Communications, 2021, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Musical instruments provide material evidence to study the diversity and technical innovation of music in space and time. We employed a cultural evolutionary perspective to analyse organological data and their relation to language groups and population history in South America, a unique and complex geographic area for human evolution. The ethnological and archaeological native musical instrument record, documented in three newly assembled continental databases, reveals exceptionally high diversity of wind instruments. We explored similarities in the collection of instruments for each population, considering geographic patterns and focusing on groupings associated with language families. A network analysis of panpipe organological features illustrates four regional/cultural clusters: two in the Tropical Forest and two in the Andes. Twenty-five percent of the instruments in the standard organological classification are present in the archaeological, but not in the ethnographic record, suggesting extinction events. Most recent extinctions can be traced back to European contact, causing a reduction in indigenous cultural diversity.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1057/s41599-021-00881-z

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