Skip to main content

The Evolutionary Significance of the Arts: Exploring the By-product Hypothesis in the Context of Ritual, Precursors, and Cultural Evolution

Biological Theory volume 10, pages 73–85 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

The role of the arts has become crucial to understanding the origins of “modern human behavior,” but continues to be highly controversial as it is not always clear why the arts evolved and persisted. This issue is often addressed by appealing to adaptive biological explanations. However, we will argue that the arts have evolved culturally rather than biologically, exploiting biological adaptations rather than extending them. In order to support this line of inquiry, evidence from a number of disciplines will be presented showing how the relationship between the arts, evolution, and adaptation can be better understood by regarding cultural transmission as an important second inheritance system. This will allow an alternative proposal to be formulated as to the proper place of the arts in human evolution. However, in order for the role of the arts to be fully addressed, the relationship of culture to genes and adaptation will be explored. Based on an assessment of the cognitive, biological, and cultural aspects of the arts, and their close relationship with ritual and associated activities, we will conclude with the null hypothesis that the arts evolved as a necessary but nonfunctional concomitant of other traits that cannot currently be refuted.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price includes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Notes

  1. This is exemplified in the fact that, since the beginning of the 20th century, aesthetic appeal also began to lose its central position in Western art as illustrated by the (in)famous example of Duchamp’s urinal of 1917, and by the 1960s the idea of beauty had virtually disappeared from contemporary art (Danto 2003).

  2. Yet this, in turn, begs the question of what AMHGs themselves meant by functional, as this will have differed from the way it is defined in the modern sense, since in the latter case this depends on a reliable utilitarian outcome predicated on sound empirical evidence. In fact, for AMHGs, the world was considered suffused by and dependent on various forces and invisible agents that a person or community regarded as decisive for survival (Ingold 2006; Fausto 2007; Carneiro 2010; VanPool and Newsome 2012). Thus, AMHGs did not subscribe to the modern dichotomy of functional/non-functional in that the significance of most, if not all things, centered on animistic agents that could potentially inhabit, in one form or another, all aspects of the world. Thus, an object from a culture might to modern humans appear purely utilitarian, but, to those originally responsible for the artifact, significance would have been accorded based on other-worldly agents (see, e.g., VanPool and Newsome 2012). This shows that Dissanayake’s dichotomy between the functional and non-functional is inappropriate. From this perspective, what is regarded as practical on a functional level today is different from how this is understood by traditional hunter–gatherer groups. For example, AMHGs might hold that the weather could be influenced by appealing to invisible agents and, in this sense, is “functional” in that a particular ritual or the use of an item employed in ritual could generate the required outcome. This is different from how functionality is referred to in modern parlance where a particular utilitarian outcome results from a specified practical procedure based on a naturalistic/materialistic outlook (Carneiro 2010).

  3. Not all uses of adaptive psychological mechanisms are adaptive. Thus, (1) the use of these mechanisms for art is only adaptive if, and only if, they have been selectively modified for the evolutionary function art may have. (2) They can be exaptive in cases where they increase reproductive success but without selective modification (i.e., exaptation; see below), and (3) if no benefits, they are a by-product.

  4. We mean relative parsimony, as traded against model complexity (i.e., goodness of fit), and not parsimony in absolute terms as in the principle of Occam’s razor, since parsimony is not defensible in the generalized way implied by Occam’s razor (Sober 2006).

References

  • Aiken N (1999) How art arouses emotion. In: Bedaux B, Cooke B (eds) Sociobiology and the arts. Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp 159–173

    Google Scholar 

  • Andrews P, Gangestad S, Matthews D (2002) Adaptationism: how to carry out an exaptationist program. Behav Brain Sci 25:489–553

  • Arak A, Enquist M (1993) Hidden preferences and the evolution of signals. Phil Trans R Soc B 340:207–213

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arak A, Enquist M (1995) Conflict, receiver bias and the evolution of signal form. Phil Trans R Soc B 349:337–344

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arnqvist G (2006) Sensory exploitation and sexual conflict. Phil Trans R Soc B 361:375–386

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atkinson QD, Whitehouse H (2011) The cultural morphospace of ritual form: examining modes of religiosity cross-culturally. Evol Hum Behav 32:50–62

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atran S, Henrich J (2010) The evolution of religion: how cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions. Biol Theory 5:18–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bahn PG, Vertut J (1997) Journey through the Ice Age. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd B (2005) Evolutionary theories of art. In: Gottschall J, Wilson DS (eds) The literary animal. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, pp 149–178

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd B (2009) On the origin of stories: evolution, cognition, and fiction. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R, Richerson PJ (2005) The origin and evolution of cultures. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R, Richerson PJ (2007) Cultural adaptation and maladaptation: of kayaks and commissars. In: Gangestad S, Simpson J (eds) The evolution of mind: fundamental questions and controversies. Guilford, New York, pp 327–331

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyer P, Liénard P (2008) Ritual behavior in obsessive and normal individuals: moderating anxiety and reorganizing the flow of action. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 17:291–294

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown S, Dissanayake E (2009) The arts are more than aesthetics: neuroaesthetics as narrow aesthetics. In: Skov M, Vartanian O (eds) neuroaesthetics. Baywood, Amityville, pp 43–57

    Google Scholar 

  • Buss DM (2004) Evolutionary psychology: the new science of the mind. Pearson, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Carneiro RL (2010) The evolution of the human mind: from supernaturalism to naturalism—an anthropological perspective. Eliot Werner, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Carroll J (2008) An evolutionary paradigm for literary study. Style 42:103–425

    Google Scholar 

  • Changizi M (2011) Harnessed: how language and music mimicked nature and transformed ape to man. Benbella Books, Dallas

    Google Scholar 

  • Danto A (2003) The abuse of beauty: aesthetics and the concept of art. Open Court, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Davies S (2012) The artful species: aesthetics, art, and evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • De La Cruz I, Gonzalez-Oliver A, Brian MK et al (2008) Sex identification of children sacrificed to the ancient Aztec rain gods in Tlatelolco. Curr Anthropol 49:519–526

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Smedt J, De Cruz H (2010) Toward an integrative approach of cognitive neuroscientific and evolutionary psychological studies of art. Evol Psychol 8:695–719

    Google Scholar 

  • De Smedt J, De Cruz H (2012) Human artistic behavior: adaptation, byproduct, or cultural group selection? In: Plaisance KS, Reydon TAC (eds) Philosophy of behavioral biology. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 167–187

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Dehaene S, Cohen L (2007) Cultural recycling of cortical maps. Neuron 56:384–398

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dehaene S, Naccache L (2001) Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework. Cognition 79:1–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dissanayake E (1988) What is art for? University of Washington Press, Seattle

    Google Scholar 

  • Dissanayake E (1995) Homo aestheticus: where art comes from and why. University of Washington Press, Seattle

    Google Scholar 

  • Dissanayake E (1999) “Making special”: an undescribed human universal and the core of a behavior of art. In: Cooke B, Turner F (eds) Biopoetics. ICUS, Lexington, pp 27–46

    Google Scholar 

  • Dissanayake E (2008) The arts after Darwin: does art have an origin and adaptive function? In: Zijlmans K, Van Damme W (eds) World art studies: exploring concepts and approaches. Valiz, Amsterdam, pp 241–263

    Google Scholar 

  • Dissanayake E (2010) The deep structure of Pleistocene rock art: the “artification hypothesis.” Pré-actes du congrès, IFRAO Ariège 2010, Pleistocene art of Europe, Lacombe, Tarascon-sur-Ariège. http://ifrao.sesta.fr/docs/Articles/Dissanayake-Signes.pdf

  • Dissanayake E (2011) “My glyph is more beautiful than yours”—but does it matter? Rock Art Res 28:168–171

    Google Scholar 

  • Donald M (1991) Origins of the modern mind: three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Dutton D (2009) The art instinct. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Edgerton RB (1992) Sick societies: challenging the myth of primitive harmony. Free Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Eibl K, Mellmann K (2008) Misleading alternatives. Style 42:166–171

    Google Scholar 

  • Fausto C (2007) Feasting on people: eating animals and humans in Amazonia. Curr Anthropol 48:497–530

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fiske AP, Haslam N (1997) Is obsessive-compulsive disorder a pathology of the human disposition to perform socially meaningful rituals? Evidence of similar content. J Nerv Ment Dis 185:211–222

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flenley J, Bahn P (2003) The enigmas of Easter Island. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamble C (1998) Paleolithic society and the release from proximity: a network approach to intimate relations. World Archaeology 29:426–449

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghazanfar AA (2008) Language evolution: neural differences that make a difference. Nat Neurosci 11:382–384

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gill KZ, Purves D (2009) A biological rationale for musical scales. PLoS One 4:e8144

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gino F, Norton, MI (2013) Why rituals work. Scientific American. URL: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-rituals-work/

  • Gombrich EH (1958) The story of art. Phaidon, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Gould SJ, Lewontin RC (1997) The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proc R Soc London B 205:581–598

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gould SJ, Vrba ES (1982) Exaptation: a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology 8:4–15

    Google Scholar 

  • Hannon EE, Trainor LJ (2007) Music acquisition: effects of enculturation and formal training on development. Trends Cogn Sci 11:467–472

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hattori Y, Masaki T, Matsuzawa T (2012) Spontaneous synchronized tapping to an auditory rhythm in a chimpanzee. Sci Rep 3:1566. doi:10.1038/srep01566

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser MD, McDermott J (2003) The evolution of the music faculty: a comparative perspective. Nat Neurosci 6:663–668

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helvenston PA, Hodgson D (2010) The neuropsychology of “animism”: implications for understanding rock art. Rock Art Res 27:61–94

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich J, McElreath R (2003) The evolution of cultural evolution. Evol Anthropol 12:123–135

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henshilwood CS, Marean CW (2003) The origin of modern human behavior. Curr Anthropol 44:627–651

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hodder I (2010) Probing religion at Çatalhöyük: an interdisciplinary experiment. In: Hodder I (ed) Religion in the emergence of civilization: Çatalhöyük as a case study. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 1–31

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hodder I (2012) Entangled: an archaeology of the relationships between humans and things. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson D (2000) Art, perception and information processing:an evolutionary perspective. Rock Art Res 17: 3–34

  • Hodgson D (2003) The biological foundations of Upper Palaeolithic art: stimulus, percept and representational imperatives. Rock Art Res 20:3–22

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson D (2013) Ambiguity, perception, and the first representations. In: Sachs-Hombach K, Schirra JRJ (eds) Origins of pictures. Papers from the Chemnitz conference, Germany 2010. Halem, Köln, pp 401–423

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson D, Helvenson PA (2006) The emergence of the representation of animals in palaeoart: insights from evolution and the cognitive, limbic and visual systems of the human brain. Rock Art Res 23:3–40

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingold T (2006) Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought. Ethnos 71:9–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson MH (2011) Face perception: a developmental perspective. In: Calder A, Rhodes G, Johnson M et al (eds) Oxford handbook of face perception. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 3–14

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaas JH (2008) The evolution of the complex sensory and motor systems of the human brain. Brain Res Bull 75:384–390

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keane W (2010) Marked, absent, habitual: approaches to Neolithic religion at Çatalhöyük. In: Hodder I (ed) Religion in the emergence of civilization. Çatalhöyük as a case study. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 187–219

  • Killin A (2013) The arts and human nature: evolutionary aesthetics and the evolutionary status of art behaviours. Biol Philos 28:703–718

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Konopka G, Friedrich T, Davis-Turak J et al (2012) Human-specific transcriptional networks in the brain. Neuron 75:601–617

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leslie M (1987) Pretense and representation: the origins of “theory of mind.” Psychol Rev 94:412–426

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liénard P, Boyer P (2006) Whence collective rituals? A cultural selection model of ritualized behavior. Am Anthropol 108:814–827

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Madden JR, Tanner K (2003) Preferences for colored bower decorations can be explained in a nonsexual context. Anim Behav 65:1077–1083

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malafouris L (2013) How things shape the mind: a theory of material engagement. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Mellmann K (2010) The multifunctionality of idle afternoons. Art and fiction in Boyd’s vision of evolution [review of Boyd 2009]. J Lit Theory online (09.03.2010). URL: http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/reviews/article/view/170/530

  • Miller GF (1999) Sexual selection for cultural displays. In: Dunbar R, Knight C, Power C (eds) The evolution of culture. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp 71–91

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller GF (2001) Aesthetic fitness: how sexual selection shaped artistic virtuosity as a fitness indicator and aesthetic preferences as mate choice criteria. Bull Psychol Arts 2:20–25

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore JD (2012) Visions of culture: an introduction to anthropological theories and theorists. AltiMira, Plymouth

    Google Scholar 

  • Morphy H (1994) The anthropology of art. In: Ingold T (ed) Companion encyclopedia of anthropology. Routledge, London, pp 648–685

    Google Scholar 

  • Morris D (1962) The biology of art. Methuen, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinker S (1997) How the mind works. Norton, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Rappaport RA (1999) Ritual and religion in the making of humanity. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Renfrew C (2008) Neuroscience, evolution and the sapient paradox: the factuality of value and of the sacred. Philos Trans R Soc London B 363:2041–2047

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richerson PJ, Boyd R (2001) Built for speed, not for comfort: darwinian theory and human culture. Hist Phil Life Sci 23:425–465

    Google Scholar 

  • Richerson PJ, Boyd R, Henrich J (2010) Gene-culture coevolution in the age of genomics. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107:8985–8992

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ryan MJ (1990) Sexual selection, sensory systems and sensory exploitation. Oxford Surv Evol Biol 7:157–195

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryan MJ (1998) Sexual selection, receiver biases, and the evolution of sex differences. Science 281:1999–2003

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saito A, Hayashi M, Takeshita H et al (2010) Drawing behavior of chimpanzees and human children: the origin of representational drawing. In: Proceedings of the third international workshop on Kansei, Fukuoka, Japan, 22–23 Feb 2010

  • Schmidt K (2010) Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age sanctuaries: new results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs. Documenta Praehistorica 37:239–256

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seeberger F (2003) Klangwelten der Altsteinzeit. CD recorded for Urgeschichtliches Museum, Blaubeuren

    Google Scholar 

  • Shennan S (2008) Canoes and cultural evolution. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:3175–3176

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Snowdon CT, Teie D (2010) Affective responses in tamarins elicited by species-specific music. Biol Lett 6:30–32

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sober E (2006) Parsimony. In: Sarkar A, Pfeifer J (eds) The philosophy of science: an encyclopedia. Routledge, New York, pp 531–538

    Google Scholar 

  • Soffer O, Conkey MW (1997) Studying ancient visual cultures. In: Conkey M, Soffer O, Stratmann D et al (eds) Beyond art: Pleistocene image and symbol. California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, pp 1–16

    Google Scholar 

  • Sosis R (2000) Religion and intragroup cooperation: preliminary results of a comparative analysis of utopian communities. Cross-Cult Res 34:70–87

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D, Hirschfeld LA (2004) The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity. Trends Cogn Sci 8:40–46

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sterelny K (2006) The evolution and evolvability of culture. Mind Lang 21:137–165

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tanaka M, Tomonaga M, Matsuzawa T (2003) Finger drawing by infant chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Anim Cogn 6:245–251

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tooby J, Cosmides L (2001) Does beauty build adapted minds? toward an evolutionary theory of aesthetics, fiction and the arts. SubStance 30:6–27

    Google Scholar 

  • VanPool CS, Newsome E (2012) The spirit in the material: a case study of animism in the American Southwest. Am Antiquity 77:243–262

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Verpooten J, Nelissen M (2010) Sensory exploitation and cultural transmission: the late emergence of iconic representations in human evolution. Theor Biosci 129:211–221

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weiner J (1994) Aesthetics as a cross-cultural category. Manchester: groups for debates in anthropological theory. Debate held 30th Oct 1993, Muriel Stott Centre, John Rylands University Library of Manchester

  • Williams GC (1966) Adaptation and natural selection. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson EO (1998) Consilience: the unity of knowledge. Knopf, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaidel DW, Nadal M, Flexas A et al (2013) An evolutionary approach to art and aesthetic experience. Psychol Aesthet Creat Arts 7:100–109

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

JV thanks the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) for support (Grant no. G085012N).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK

    Derek Hodgson

  2. Research Center for Marketing and Consumer Science, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Leuven, Leuven Louvain, Belgium

    Jan Verpooten

  3. Research Group Ethology, Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium

    Jan Verpooten

Authors
  1. Derek Hodgson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jan Verpooten
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Derek Hodgson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hodgson, D., Verpooten, J. The Evolutionary Significance of the Arts: Exploring the By-product Hypothesis in the Context of Ritual, Precursors, and Cultural Evolution. Biol Theory 10, 73–85 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-014-0182-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-014-0182-y

Keywords

  • Adaptation
  • Arts
  • By-product
  • Evolution
  • Ritual