Megaliths, Music & the Mind – The Latest in Archaeoacoustics

“The sapient paradox: can cognitive neuroscience solve it?” This question was posed when the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge initiated a conference devoted to the theme “Archaeology meets neuroscience”.[i] Colin Renfrew’s keynote article in the publication from that conference focuses on what he calls the “sapient paradox”, a puzzle that has been a thorn in the side of prehistory researchers for some time. In a nutshell, the question seems to be: why did humankind, after 200,000 years of nomadic hunting and gathering, begin building stone monuments, which prompted development of agriculture, resulting in the settled lifestyle that sent us into Western civilization?[ii]