In 1907, the musicologist Cecil Sharp drew an interesting parallel between the development of folk songs and the evolution of animal species by natural selection:

In the evolution of species of the animal and vegetable worlds, those variations will be preserved, which are of advantage to their possessors in the competition for existence. In the evolution of folk-tunes, as we have already seen, the corresponding principle of selection is the taste of the community. Those tune-variations, which appeal to the community, will be perpetuated as against those which attract the individual only.

…

Of the innumerable changes made by individual singers, only those that win general approval are perpetuated; the rest, being ignored, pass into oblivion.

The causes which lead to variation have no material significance. They may or may not be relevant to the issue. The starling, for instance, may have left the ranks with the express purpose of luring the flock in its direction; but, more probably, its action was due to something else, to mere waywardness or to the search for food.

In like manner, the changes which singers, introduce into the words or melodies of their songs, proceed from many causes, forgetfulness, chance, accident and whatnot; but very rarely, if ever, from a definite and conscious desire to improve.

It makes little sense to say a particular person wrote a song like, say, The Cuckoo in any of its various versions. Individual musicians may have contributed a verse, line, or melody, but the song as its recorded is the creation of a process, not of a lone songwriter – just an animal species is not the result of deliberate design, but is instead the result of the process of natural selection.

In arguing that culture can develop in a manner analogous to evolution of animal species, Sharp predates Richard Dawkins’ idea of a meme, the cultural analogue to genes in the second edition of The Selfish Gene, by nearly seventy years.