Music. Photo by Andy Buscemi.

Over at the collaborative science blog Nothing in Biology Makes Sense!, guest contributor James Gaines writes about the evolutionary context of music-making.

Music is one of the few social constructs that truly permeates human culture, and reasons for this have fascinated scientists and philosophers for centuries. Even Darwin himself wrote on the subject, speculating about whether and how natural selection could explain it. Today, there seem to be three major ideas behind why music evolved.

For a breakdown of those three evolutionary hypotheses, go read the whole thing.◼