Music reaches across cultural and linguistic boundaries, holding a prominent place in celebrations, festivals, gatherings, and daily life. Whether people perform it or simply listen, music is deeply embedded in human societies.

A new opinion paper argues that the abilities behind music were present in ancient Homo sapiens at least 135,000 years ago. Some of the biological foundations of musicality, the authors suggest, could be millions of years older.

Musicality refers to the collection of abilities needed to perceive, produce, and appreciate music. Pinpointing when those capacities evolved has proved difficult because much of ancient musical behavior would have left no physical evidence.

The archaeological record nevertheless offers some striking clues. A conch shell dating to 17,000 years ago can still produce three notes, while bone flutes from 12,000 years ago were designed to mimic the calls of birds of prey.

The first known bone flutes are much older, appearing around 40,000 years ago. An object resembling a flute that was discovered in a Slovenian cave has even been attributed by some researchers to Neanderthals rather than Homo sapiens.

That disputed interpretation raises the possibility that Homo sapiens may not have been the only musical human species. Yet physical instruments can reveal only part of the story because music does not require crafted objects.

Singing, for example, is unlikely to leave any trace for archaeologists to discover. This creates a major gap between the surviving physical record and the full range of musical behavior that ancient populations may have practiced.

One theory known as musilanguage proposes that a tuneful form of communication resembling choral singing appeared before both recognizable music and language. Under that theory, the two familiar systems emerged from an earlier form of vocal communication.

Researchers Oliver T. Bellman, Melina Witt, and Marisa Hoeschele examined archaeological evidence alongside genomic data. Their goal was to identify the latest point by which musicality must have appeared in Homo sapiens.

Their argument rests on music being present in some form in almost every known human culture. They therefore contend that musicality must have emerged before the first population divergence in the history of the species, dated to 135,000 years ago.

That earliest division in the human population gave rise to the Khoisan peoples of South Africa. Similar reasoning has been applied to language, which has also been argued to predate this division because of shared structural features among thousands of human languages.

Bellman, Witt, and Hoeschele describe approximately 135,000 years ago as a minimum date for modern Homo sapiens. However, they say essential components of musicality, including vocal learning and cultural transmission, may have followed separate evolutionary histories, developed gradually, and existed before the species itself.

Observations of chimpanzees add another layer to that possibility. The closest nonhuman relatives of people have been seen swaying, tapping their feet, and clapping with music, behavior that suggests they possess at least a sense of rhythm.

Chimpanzees are also known to drum. A recent study involving a chimpanzee called Ayumu showed him combining percussion with vocal sounds, while his facial expressions suggested to scientists that he was thoroughly enjoying the performance.

The researchers write that “while full-blown musicality is found within our species, many of its key components likely rest on an ancient, shared heritage predating the Homo – Pan split” that occurred between 6 and 8 million years ago. That places some possible foundations of musicality far beyond the proposed minimum date.

Using 135,000 years ago as a lower boundary could provide a benchmark for future research. The authors say such work could illuminate musicality as well as other cognitive abilities, including the human capacities to tell stories and compose poetry.

“Looking ahead,” they write, “we suggest that musicality offers a crucial, empirical baseline for reconstructing the evolution of human mind and communication.” The opinion paper is published in Frontiers in Psychology.