Singing Alone

The impulse to sing and dance and croon soothing songs to babies is so common across cultures that scientists have long believed it is ingrained in the human psyche. 

New research focused on the Northern Aché, an Indigenous people in Paraguay, however, is challenging this notion, illustrating that these behaviors are learned rather than hardwired into humans. 

With the exception of singing in church, a practice introduced by missionaries, Northern Aché adults rarely sing, and when they do, they do it alone, the new research showed. They never dance or sing lullabies to children. 

“It’s not that the Northern Aché don’t have any need for lullabies,” lead study author Manvir Singh said in a statement. “Aché parents still calm fussy infants. They use playful speech, funny faces, smiling, and giggling. Given that lullabies have been shown to soothe infants, Aché parents would presumably find them useful.” 

“Dance and infant-related song are widely considered universal, a view that has been supported by cross-cultural research, including my own,” Singh added. In contrast, his study shows that those behaviors are learned, unlike other, innate behaviors, such as smiling. 

According to the researchers, the Northern Aché lost cultural practices like dance, lullabies, shamanism, horticulture, and the ability to make a fire at the same time that their population went into decline.  

Another theory is that certain cultural practices disappeared when the Northern Aché were settled on reservations: After this, they lost other traditional behaviors such as ceremonies celebrating puberty and hunting magic, researchers said. 

This project, which drew on decades of research on the Northern Aché, provides insight into the different roles that biology and cultural transmission play in the creation and preservation of dance and lullabies in human societies, they added. 

“This doesn’t refute the possibility that humans have genetically evolved adaptations for dancing and responding to lullabies,” Singh said. “It does mean, however, that cultural transmission matters much more for maintaining those behaviors than many researchers, including myself, have suspected.”