Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction

Sounds Wild and Broken, Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory ExtinctionDavid George Haskell, 2022For the greater part of Earth’s existence there was sound, vibrating molecules of water and air but no living existent creature was there to hear. About 1.5 billion years ago eukaryotic cells evolved a hairlike member called cilia that extended outward from their central body. This enabled the cell to propel itself but also to sense movement around itself. More than a billion years elapsed until these cells were incorporated within a cartilage like structure within the backbones of fish. Through this structure fish could sense movement around them, facilitating both prey and predator detection. Fast forward another 300 million years and this structure evolved into a spiral like salt water filled organ called the cochlea in the first land vertebrates. Air sound transmission through the jaws of these creatures to the cilia in the cochlea and evolution had finally enabled creatures to hear air bound sound transmission. We humans hear through this same anciently derived cochlea in our inner ear and some further evolutions of fish gills to form our ear drum and inner ear bones. The Larynx and voice box that enables us to make sound are also evolved from fish gills and the cheek and throat muscles which enabled us as mammals to nurse also enable us to form words and music. This book is the story of how this evolutionary miracle of hearing and sound transmission has shaped life through inner and intraspecies communication and how it has enabled the development of cultures in both animal and human realms. It is also a story of how modern human civilization is now endangering the beautifully honed and adapted natural soundscapes of both land and oceans.Rainforests: The most complex and biodiverse ecosystem on earth; the lungs of the planet. Haskel takes us there to experience the sonic marvels, to listen: “ No one knows exactly how many insect species live in the forests around Tiputini, Ecuador, but the count may be near 100,000, many of which are sound makers. Frogs and birds are better known. Nearly 600 bird species and 140 frog species live here. The same number that inhabits the entire varied terrain on North America are crammed into a space of a few square kilometers. The sonic community is thus crowded and richly variegated. The power and diversity of the rain forest’s animals reveal sound’s communicative power. Every species here is advertising presence, revealing identity. And conveying meaning to distant others without the danger of being seen. At night, darkness conceals. In the day the dense profusion of rain forest foliage is almost as effective as a cloak….. Human music contains complex, divergent, and sometimes discordant narratives but emerges from a narrow generative source, the composer and the proclivities of the human ear. In the rain forest there is no single composer and agreed upon collection of tonal or melodic rules. Many aesthetics and narratives coexist here. Listening in the rain forest is challenging because we hear many stories at once, each expressed with a voice suited to the aesthetics of its own species….From the rain forest the author takes us to the oceans; the songs of the Humpback whale, the communications and social communications of Sperm Whales and Orcas; then he takes us back to the human realm where he attends a concert of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. As contrasted with the music of the rain forest this a very structured ritual and formal setting but what is the communication going on between Orchestra and audience. Haskell maintains contrary to appearances something very ancient is going on here: the human transmission of emotions through sound. The instruments from which the music emanates have deep historical connections to human culture but also from materials sourced from the forests and marshlands of the world. “From the moment the oboe sounds, forests and wetlands come alive on stage. In this place of high human culture, we are lifted into the joy and beauty partly by the sounds of other beings, our senses immersed in the physicality of plants and animals. When a modern orchestra takes the stage, the air becomes animated with the sounds of vibrating plant and animal parts, the voices of forests and fields reanimated through human art.”How old is human instrumental music? In the forests of southern Germany there is a cave where in sediments 44,000 years old where possibly the first musical instruments ever created by the hand of man were found. Flutes crafted out of vulture wing bones and mammoth bones are found in a cave with the perfect reverbs and acoustics for flute music; the first concert hall perhaps? “Listen; primate lips blow into shaped bird bones and mammoth tusks. A chimera emerges. Hunters’ breath animates the skeletons of prey. The air vibrates with melodies and timbres from a source previously unknown anywhere on earth: musical instruments.”In this book Haskel is our guide as he takes us to soundscapes in the world’s oceans and forests to witness sounds, we have never heard, but also to alert us to a crisis of our own making. For most aquatic mammals sound combines all of the senses. Sound is their sight, touch and hearing. It enables them to find prey, communicate and find mates. Sound in water travels many times farther and many times faster than in air. Since the 1950s container ship and oil tanker traffic has exploded tenfold. As these ships transverse the worlds oceans, the sounds of deep throbbing diesel engines and cavitating propellers echo across all the worlds oceans. Oil companies surveying for offshore oil wells send massive explosive soundwaves into the ocean. Submarines send mega sonar beams out to guide them across the depths as well as searching for potential enemies. The oceans of the 1950’s were orders of magnitude quieter than they are now. If there is an acoustic hell it is in today‘s oceans. We have turned the homes of the most acoustically sophisticated and sensitive animals into a bedlam, an inescapable tumult of human sound. Human degradation is not just in the oceans it is also in the rainforests and boreal forests that we have silenced our world. In the rainforests of Brazil and Ecuador millions of acres of forests are cleared each year to make way for monocrops of sugar cane and cattle ranches. What once were sanctuaries of complex acoustic sound are now turned silent. In the jungles of Borneo and Indonesia complex, interlinked and sustainable habitats are raised to make way for palm oil plantations to supply the snack food industry. Ancient and beautiful old growth forests in the Americas raised for timber and pulp, replaced with unsustainable fire prone monocrops.When we buy imported goods from China, do we realize the damage being done to the ocean’s ecosystems? when we buy chips or sugary drinks do we realize we are participating in the destruction of rain forests? When we fill up our tank with gas do we take the time to contemplate the destruction of offshore oil drilling or the looming catastrophic potential of climate change? Do we take the time to find out where the stuff we buy comes from? As Haskell states: “Because concern follows closely on the heels of empathetic connection, our senses shape our ethics, without sensory connection, we fail to enter into the embodied relationships that are the foundation of ethical deliberation and right action. Users like me. Of paper pulp from pine plantations or timber from Bornean forests never know where our goods come from. I look around at the objects in my house. With the exception of some garden vegetables, the province of everything I own bears no relationship to my body, my senses. This ignorance and isolation not only are the products of globalized trade but are the source of the sensory alienation needed to sustain a destructive economy. With our senses cut off from the information and relationships that root and orient ethics, we are adrift. Ecological despoilation and human injustice can thus continue unrestrained by lived relationship.”I judge a book by how it changes my perceptions of the world and my place in it, how it takes me to places I never thought of going and exposes me to ideas I never contemplated. This is a book that does all of those things in beautiful and eloquent prose, and I highly recommend. JACK

Loved (!) this author's earlier two books - both superb reads! I have told so many people to read those books. I feel this book gets bogged down in the details of the science. I feel uncomfortable saying this because his science is good. The overall tone of this book is on a different level of technical detail than the other two books. Not bad, just harder to digest the details and stay focused on the bigger story he's aiming for.

I gave this 5 stars because the author/book is wonderful, but the Viking hardback edition I got had the Introduction and first 1-16 pages missing! My copy just started on page 17. Hope it was just an isolated fluke.

David Haskell is a deep thinking scientist that writes like a poet. I’ve read all 3 of his books. You will not look or perceive “ nature” the same after reading him. Highly recommend any of his works. He should win a Pulitzer for his groundbreaking research and writing

I love reading Haskell's books. It always make me think about things differently. What things? Seems like everything. A great read. You need to take it slow and easy. Need time to think about what you are learning. Don't go into it with any expectations. Just read it, you'll be amazed at where it will take you.

Regalo

An interesting book tracing the origins of sound and certainly the latter chapter on the impact of our sound on animals is sobering. Worth a read.