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Cultural evolution: Lab-cultured musical universals

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, Article number: 0018 (2017) Cite this article

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Universal features of rhythmic music emerge culturally via iterated learning in the laboratory.

The issue of universals in human culture — whether in languages, music, religions or other domains — has always generated controversy and debate. This is partly because cultures vary greatly, at least superficially: there always seems to be some group somewhere that violates any proposed ‘universal laws’. Nonetheless, attempts to understand human nature and the biological basis of human culture keep returning to this issue. For language, a long tradition in comparative linguistics defines and studies language universals of various sorts. In contrast, in music this topic has lain dormant until quite recently. But a recent series of papers has broken this silence, and the issue of ‘musical universals’ is now in the air.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. W. Tecumseh Fitch is in the Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria.,

    W. Tecumseh Fitch

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  1. W. Tecumseh Fitch
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Correspondence to W. Tecumseh Fitch.

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Fitch, W. Cultural evolution: Lab-cultured musical universals. Nat Hum Behav 1, 0018 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0018

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0018

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