Music’s evolutionary origin is established because it is present across all humans (meeting the biologists’ criterion of being widespread in a species); it has been around a long time (refuting the notion that it is merely audio cheesecake); it involves specialized brain structures, including dedicated memory systems that can remain functional when other memory systems fail (when a physical brain system develops across all humans, we assume that it has an evolutionary basis); and it is analogous to music making in other species.
