1
of
1
A Million Years of Music
The Emergence of Human Modernity
Series: Zone Books
Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.
Check link for latest rating. ( 42 ratings, 7 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still
learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Summary
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK
Please add to wishlist to be notified when back in stock
Sorry, we're currently out of stock of A Million Years of Music. Please add to your Wishlist and we'll send you an email as soon as it's back in stock.
Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book is suited to readers interested in the arts and culture, especially those fascinated by the evolution of music, anthropology, cognitive science, and human origins. It appeals to scholars and thoughtful general readers seeking a comprehensive and scholarly narrative on music’s place in human history.
Latest News
New Releases to add to your TBR (11th August)
There's a new release for everyone this week - here's your TBR roundup! Lizzy shares...
Book Briefing - 11th August
New Zealand books are recognized internationally, AI continues to cause drama, exciting new books are...
Exciting New Tonies - Minecraft / Chronicles of Narnia
New Tonies up for pre-order including Minecraft, Chronicles of Narnia, Tom Fletcher & Enid Blyton.
Remembering Sir Sam Neill
I was so saddened when I heard of the passing of Sam Neill. I've enjoyed...
Book Briefing - 5th August
Welcome to this week's Book Briefing where we round up the news for the week!
See moreA new narrative for the emergence of human music, drawing from archaeology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary theory.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
A new narrative for the emergence of human music, drawing from archaeology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary theory.
What is the origin of music? In the last few decades, this centuries-old puzzle has been reinvigorated by new archaeological evidence and developments in the fields of cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary theory.
In this path-breaking book, renowned musicologist Gary Tomlinson draws from these areas to construct a new narrative for the emergence of human music. Starting at a period of human prehistory long before Homo sapiens or music existed, Tomlinson describes the incremental attainments that, by changing the communication and society of prehuman species, laid the foundation for musical behaviours in more recent times. He traces in Neandertals and early sapiens the accumulation and development of these capacities, and he details their coalescence into modern musical behaviour across the last hundred millennia.
But A Million Years of Music is not about music alone. Tomlinson builds a model of human evolution that revises our understanding of the interaction of biology and culture across evolutionary time-scales, challenging and enriching current models of our deep history.
As he tells his story, he draws in other emerging human traits: language, symbolism, a metaphysical imagination and the ritual it gives rise to, complex social structure, and the use of advanced technologies. Tomlinson's model of evolution allows him to account for much of what makes us a unique species in the world today and provides a new way of understanding the appearance of humanity in its modern form.
Series: Zone Books
View all-
Objectivity
The emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences is revealed through images in scientific atlases—a story of how lofty epistemic ideals fuse with workaday practices. Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences and show how the concept differs from its alternatives:...Paperback$9499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Myth and Thought among the Greeks
A classic work that rereads questions of muthos and logos in multifaceted contexts. When Jean-Pierre Vernant first published Myth and Thought among the Greeks in 1965, it transformed the field of ancient Greek scholarship, calling forth a new way to think about Greek myth and thought. In eighteen essays—three of which, along with a new preface, are translated into English...Paperback$8499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Masochism
In his stunning essay, Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze provides a rigorous and informed philosophical examination of the work of the late 19th-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze's essay, certainly the most profound study yet produced on the relations between sadism and masochism, seeks to develop and explain Masoch's "peculiar way of 'desexualizing' love while at the same time...Paperback$6999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece
The acclaimed French classicist Marcel Detienne's first book traces the odyssey of truth, aletheia, from mytho-religious concept to philosophical thought in archaic Greece. Detienne begins by examining how truth in Greek literature first emerges as an enigma. He then looks at the movement from a religious to a secular thinking about truth in the speech of the sophists and orators....Paperback$6400Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
The Culture of the Copy
A novel attempt to make sense of our preoccupation with copies of all kinds—from counterfeits to instant replay, from parrots to photocopies. The Culture of the Copy is a novel attempt to make sense of the Western fascination with replicas, duplicates, and twins. In a work that is breathtaking in its synthetic and critical achievements, Hillel Schwartz charts the repercussions...Paperback$8999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750
This text explores ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through to the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, and celestial apparitions adorned romances and puzzled philosophers. Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, this book...Paperback$10500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Christian Materiality
Late Medieval Christianity's encounter with miraculous materials is viewed in the context of changing conceptions of matter itself. In the period between 1150 and 1550, an increasing number of Christians in western Europe made pilgrimage to places where material objects—among them paintings, statues, relics, pieces of wood, earth, stones, and Eucharistic wafers—allegedly erupted into life through such activities as bleeding,...Paperback$8499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
The Propensity of Things
In this book, his first to appear in English, French sinologist François Jullien uses the Chinese concept of shi—meaning disposition or circumstance, power or potential—as a touchstone to explore Chinese culture and to uncover the intricate structure underlying Chinese modes of thinking. In this strikingly original contribution to our understanding of Chinese philosophy, François Jullien uses the Chinese concept of...Paperback$7499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Forensic Architecture
A new form of investigative practice uses architecture as an optical device to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction. In recent years, the group Forensic Architecture has begun using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups,...Paperback$10500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Publics and Counterpublics
An investigation of how the idea of a public as a central fiction of modern life informs our literature, politics, and culture. Most of the people around us belong to our world not directly, as kin or comrades, but as strangers. How do we recognize them as members of our world? We are related to them as transient participants in...Paperback$7800Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
The Accursed Share
Most Anglo-American readers know Bataille as a novelist. The Accursed Share provides an excellent introduction to Bataille the philosopher. Here he uses his unique economic theory as the basis for an incisive inquiry into the very nature of civilization. Unlike conventional economic models based on notions of scarcity, Bataille's theory develops the concept of excess: a civilization, he argues, reveals...Paperback$7000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece
Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet offers a compelling reinterpretation of Greek thought and literature. These scholars are at the forefront of contemporary French classical studies, renowned for their innovative approaches. In this work, presented as a single volume, the authors deliver a provocative and unconventional reading of Greek tragedy. They highlight its stark...PaperbackSold Out
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
MAKE Literary Magazine praises the book as deeply interdisciplinary and a crucial work that challenges dismissive views of music, celebrating its role as central to human identity. Frontiers in Neuroscience highlights Tomlinson's biocultural hypothesis that portrays music as an emergent social phenomenon rather than a simple adaptation. The book is described as representing the current state of the art in understanding the musical mind.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781890951528
Publisher: Zone Books
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 30 October 2018
Country: United States
Imprint: Zone Books
Illustration: 8 b&w illus., 2 color ills; 10 Illustrations, unspecified
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 368
About the Author
Gary Tomlinson is John Hay Whitney Professor of Music and Humanities at Yale University, where he directs the Whitney Humanities Center. His books include Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others; Metaphysical Song: An Essay on Opera; and The Singing of the New World: Indigenous Voice in the Era of European Contact.
Also by Gary Tomlinson
View all-
The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning
A groundbreaking account of the origin and place of meaning in the earthly biosphere What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, while others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the...Hardback$7700Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks
More from Arts & Culture
View all-
Dylan's PickBold Types
A tribute to 32 truly independent bookshops throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, from north of Auckland down to Dunedin, and coast to coast. Jane Ussher's photographs show every bookstore in its unique nature - including behind the counter, smoko rooms, the mess which tells the hardworking story behind the joy of matching books with customers. Jemma Moreira's careful editing has crafted...Hardback$5999Elsewhere:$7000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseDisney Moana: The Official Cookbook
Embark on a culinary adventure with Moana of Motunui with Pacific recipes inspired by Moana and Moana 2! After a long day of sailing to see how far you’ll go or keeping the demigod Maui out of trouble with Te Fiti, catch a break with the delicious dishes in Moana: The Official Cookbook! Featuring more than 50 recipes spanning the...Hardback$4499Elsewhere:$5299Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Did I Ever Tell You This?
In this unexpected memoir, written in a creative burst of just a few months in 2022, Sam Neill tells the story of how he became one of the world’s most celebrated actors, who has worked with everyone from Meryl Streep to Isabel Adjani, from Jeff Goldblum to Sean Connery, from Steven Spielberg to Jane Campion. By his own account, his...Paperback$3799Elsewhere:$4500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
This Angry Pen of Mine
This Angry Pen of Mine by Layne Staley invites you to dive into the untold creative world of Layne Staley, the legendary voice behind Alice in Chains. This extraordinary collection showcases his handwritten lyrics, deeply personal poetry, stunning original artwork, rare photos, fan tributes, and so much more. Step into the world of Layne Staley like never before. For the...Hardback$7299Elsewhere:$8999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Odyssey
Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travellers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative....Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3599Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
They Bloom Because of You
Bestselling author and Instagram sensation Jessica Urlichs returns with a new collection of beautifully observed poems about the ever-evolving journey of motherhood - the hard, the magic and the fleeting. ‘A raw and honest read that makes you feel seen and understood in a way that will bring you to tears.’ - Hilary Swank ‘A book to keep close and...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
14% offLeaves of Grass
A collectible new Penguin Classics series offers beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. In 1855, Walt Whitman published his first collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass. The volume received great praise from leading Transcendentalist poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. This encouragement led to what would become a lifelong project, as Whitman expanded and rewrote the volume until his death...Hardback$1900Elsewhere:$2400Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Great Writers and the Cats who Owned Them
Throughout history, cats and writers have bonded together in a magical combination of comfort, companionship and inspiration. The famous authors featured here range from Samuel Johnson, whose cat Hodge dined on oysters, and Edward Lear, whose charismatic cat Foss was missing half his tail, to Margaret Mitchell, L. M. Montgomery and Dorothy L. Sayers, who rescued her kitten Blitz from...Hardback$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Beautiful Chaos
The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller Selected poems from bestselling author and Instagram poet, Jessica Urlichs. 'These words awaken the magic of life by celebrating the ordinary.' - Giovanna Fletcher Motherhood is messy and beautiful, and hard and humbling. We adore our children and sometimes we miss ourselves. Beautiful Chaos is a collection of raw, honest poems about motherhood, capturing everything...Paperback$2900Elsewhere:$3500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Iliad
When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017—revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was "fresh, unpretentious and lean" (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)—critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Wreck This Journal: Now in Colour
The creative journey continues with Wreck This Journal: Now in Colour by Keri Smith, the latest and most vibrant edition of the groundbreaking series that redefined journaling. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, this edition brings the playful destructiveness of the original to life in dazzling full colour, adding a dynamic new dimension to the beloved prompts. Whether you're a seasoned Wreck-er,...Paperback$2500Elsewhere:$2800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
A Thousand Feasts
THE INSTANT #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER From award-winning writer Nigel Slater, comes a new and exquisitely written collection of notes, memoir, stories and small moments of joy. 'Nigel Slater’s prose is the rarest delicacy of all: exquisite yet effortless, filled with heart, tenderness, yearning and humour' ELIZABETH DAY For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
