Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. Following the lead of evolutionary linguistic research, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the theory of selfdomestication, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to mammal domestication, triggered by a progressive reduction in reactive aggression levels in response to environmental changes. In the paper, we specifically argue that changes in aggression management through the course of human cultural evolution can account for the behaviors conducive to the emergence and evolution of music. We hypothesize 4 stages in the evolutionary development of music under the influence of environmental changes and evolution of social organization: starting from musilanguage, proto-music gave rise to personal and private forms of timbre-oriented music, then to small-group ensembles of pitch-oriented music, at first of indefinite and then definite pitch, and finally to collective (tonal) music. These stages parallel what has been hypothesized for languages and encompass the diversity of music types and genres described worldwide. Overall, music complexity emerges in a gradual fashion under the effects of enhanced abilities for cultural niche construction, resulting from the stable trend of reduction in reactive aggression towards the end of the Pleistocene, leading to the rise of hospitality codes, and succeeded by increase in proactive aggression from the beginning of the Holocene onward. This paper addresses numerous controversies in the literature on the evolution of music by providing a clear structural definition of music, identifying its structural features that distinguish it from oral language, and summarizing the typology of operational functions of music and formats of its transmission. The proposed framework of structural approach to music arms a researcher with means to identify and comparatively analyze different schemes of tonal organization of music, placing them in the context of human social and cultural evolution. Especially valuable contribution to the understanding of transition from animal communication to human music and language is the theory of so-called “personal song”, described and analyzed here from ethological, social, cultural, cognitive, and musicological perspectives. The emergence of personal song and its development into a social institution are interlinked with the evolution of kinship and placed into the timeline of cultural evolution, based on totality of ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and paleoclimatic data.

与语言一样，音乐也许是我们最独特的行为特征。在进化语言学研究的引领下，人们提出了不同的假设来解释为什么只有人类演奏音乐以及这种能力是如何在物种中进化的。在本文中，我们提出了一种建立在自我驯化理论基础上的音乐进化新模型，根据该理论，人类表型至少部分是类似于哺乳动物驯化过程的结果，该过程是由反应性逐渐减少所触发的。应对环境变化的攻击程度。在本文中，我们特别认为，人类文化进化过程中攻击性管理的变化可以解释有利于音乐出现和进化的行为。我们假设在环境变化和社会组织进化的影响下，音乐的进化发展有四个阶段：从音乐语言开始，原始音乐产生了以音色为导向的个人和私人形式的音乐，然后发展为音高的小组合奏。面向音乐，首先是不定音，然后是定音，最后是集体（音调）音乐。这些阶段与语言的假设相似，并且涵盖了世界范围内描述的音乐类型和流派的多样性。总体而言，在文化生态位构建能力增强的影响下，音乐的复杂性逐渐出现，这是由于更新世末期反应性攻击性减少的稳定趋势，导致了好客准则的兴起，并成功地通过增加从全新世开始就主动进攻。本文通过提供清晰的音乐结构定义，识别其区别于口头语言的结构特征，并总结音乐操作功能的类型及其传播格式，解决了有关音乐演变的文献中的众多争议。所提出的音乐结构方法框架为研究人员提供了识别和比较分析音乐音调组织的不同方案的方法，并将它们置于人类社会和文化进化的背景下。对理解从动物交流到人类音乐和语言的转变特别有价值的贡献是所谓的“个人歌曲”理论，这里从行为学、社会、文化、认知和音乐学的角度进行描述和分析。个人歌曲的出现及其发展成为一种社会制度，与亲属关系的演变相互关联，并基于民族志、考古学、人类学、遗传学和古气候数据的整体，被置于文化进化的时间线中。