#music cognition

Tagged music cognition · show all articles

A fist-sized ochre fragment engraved with a cross-hatched grid held under a large ring-lit magnifier lens on an articulated arm, the lens still swinging into position and not yet centred over the engraving, a numbered archival tag and a nest of cotton wadding beside it on a stainless tray

The Ornamented Ape: What Art Is For, If It Is For Anything

Ochre engravings older than 70,000 years, shell beads pushed past 100,000, and a flute that might just be a hyena's leftovers. The dates in the ground are secure. The explanation for why any of it exists is not, and saying so precisely is the argument.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 29, 2026 · 20 min read

Browse by Category

Surprise me →

All AI Hardware & Semiconductors 100 AI Agents & Systems 43 Foundation Models 30 Model Evaluation 23 AI Industry 12 AI Infrastructure 11 Open Models 9 Edge AI & Electronics 9 AI Safety 9 AI Research 9 History of Technology 5 Evolutionary Psychology 4 Invention & Engineering 3 Human History 3 Evolutionary Biology 3 Einstein & Evolution 3 Technological Evolution 2 Industry Analysis 2 Humanity & Technology 2 Datacenters & Infrastructure 2 Biology 2 Writing & Information 1 Structural Biology 1 Small & Edge Models 1 Semiconductor Markets 1 Security & Technology 1 Security 1 Scientific Revolution 1 Robotics & Embodied AI 1 Quantum Information 1 Planetary Science 1 Physics 1 Particle Physics 1 Origins & Astrobiology 1 Open-Weight Models 1 Neuroscience 1 Metrology 1 Mathematics & Computation 1 Materials Science 1 Labour & Technology 1 Interpretability 1 Institutions & State Capacity 1 Institutions & Economy 1 Inference Economics 1 Industrial Revolutions 1 Human Systems 1 Human Evolution 1 History of Computing 1 Governance & Policy 1 Future Studies 1 Evolutionary Physics 1 Evolutionary Nuclear Physics 1 Evolution as Mechanism 1 Evolution & Ecology 1 Ethics of Technology 1 Ethics & Governance 1 Energy & Civilization 1 Earth & Climate 1 Demography & Urbanization 1 Data & Training 1 Cumulative Culture 1 Cultural Evolution 1 Cosmology 1 Condensed Matter 1 Chemistry & Catalysis 1 Chemistry 1 Alignment & Safety 1 Agriculture & Cities 1 Agent Evaluation 1 AI Security 1 AI Economics & Systems 1 AI & The Web 1