Social networks existed long before Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. But how they formed in ancient times has sometimes stymied scientists. Now, a study in Nature Human Behaviour demonstrates that music played an important role in connecting different hunter-gatherer groups in Central Africa.
Central Africa provides a rich trove of history for anthropologists to plumb. Hunter-gatherers have lived there for hundreds of thousands of years. But finding the cultural connectivity that has developed between communities over that time period is challenging, in part because modernization sometimes squelches older ties.
