France, Aug. 31 -- From religious worship to battle songs, singing has always been at the heart of human tradition. It is a form of expression, solidarity, memory and resistance. Songs tell the story of societies across the world.

"If we consider that singing is vocalising with breath, then humans have always sung,"said Nathalie Henrich Bernardoni of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), who specialises in vocal sciences.

"I think that they even started before they spoke, because ultimately it's easier to vocalise before structuring syllables and words - that's what babies do."

The first songs are impossible to date, but the earliest traces appear in Antiquity once writing developed to record them. Egyptian civilis...