Drumming Monkeys and Music Evolution?

Remember how evolution is used to explain almost everything, actually explaining nothing? Instead of using their skill and education to do something useful, some of Darwin's disciples produced some evoporn about how chimpanzees demonstrate the evolution of rhythms, and then music.

There are some interesting things in the research, showing that the chimps have different styles and selected percussive devices. This is supposed to show that an unknown common ancestor of humans and apes also drummed. However, commonality can also be evidence of a common Designer.

Chimpanzee playing drum kit, made at DeepAI

Anyone who has studied on it a spell knows that music is intricate and many things are coordinated. No word of chimpanzees composing a drum piece or full-scale music to go with it. Also, our alleged evolutionary cousins have been around a long time, but they have not developed intricacy of drumming.

Presuppose evolution and expect to have one's biases confirmed results in pusillanimous attempts at science and logic. The fact remains that humans and apes were created separately, and we have some similarities. Deal with it, hippies.

A recent article by Vesta Eleuteri and team, published in Cell Press (Current Biology), struck a sharp chord, claiming to have uncovered the “first systematic evidence” that chimpanzees are able to drum in “non-random” fashion, “…show[ing] key elements of human musical rhythm”.

Among the discoveries was that Western and Eastern chimpanzees use distinct rhythms; similar to how different people groups have distinct musical signatures and genres. In a bold declaration, the authors asserted that “…drumming in our ape relatives contributes to understanding the evolutionary origins of human rhythmic percussion”.  

While the discovery of similar musical behaviors between chimps and humans may drum up attention, is it really a crescendo piece for evolutionary theory?

To read the rest, beat it over to "Monkey Drumming Is Not Music."