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17‣ Fully realising the moral dilemmas connected to the suggested“asynchronous model of the shift to articulated speech by different humanpopulations”, I will specially discuss moral issues and stereotypes we may beconfronted with when discussing the suggested model. I will argue that the earlier(or later) shift to articulated speech did not give any evolutionary (historical,social or cultural) advantage to any of the human populations.‣ According to the general consensus between speech pathologists,the nature of the well-known human speech pathology, stuttering, is closelyrelated to the late evolution of articulated speech in human evolution. Therefore, Isuggest that the prevalence of stuttering in different human populations can bevery different and can indicate the chronological differences of the shift toarticulated speech in different populations. It will be demonstrated that there is aclearly marked correlation between the distribution of traditional polyphony andmuch higher prevalence of stuttering in the same human populations (forexample, among Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans);Although traditional polyphony is a topic mostly studied within the field called“ethnomusicology” (and the author of this book is an ethnomusicologist), I deeplybelieve that the origins and development of the phenomenon of human choral singing isnot an ethnomusicological or musicological problem only. That’s why this book is notwritten for musicologists and ethnomusicologists alone. I hope that scholars of a fewother disciplines will also be interested in discussing the issues of the evolution of humanintelligence, language and speech in the light of the evolution of human group singing.That’s why I have tried to avoid maximally using technical musicological terminologywherever it was possible, and also tried to provide simple non-technical explanations ofthese terms to make clear most of the concepts discussed in this book for nonmusicologicalreaders.Any work that tries to combine a very wide scope of problems and materials is aneasy target for criticism from experts in different fields. Of course, it is impossible for ascholar to be an expert in many fields, and I am sure that most of the expected criticismof my book will be well deserved. That’s why I understand too well the desire of most ofcontemporary scholars to stay strictly within their immediate sphere of expertise and notto venture “outside the circle”. The contemporary scholarly world is racing towards themultiple division of each of the disciplines with an astonishing speed, but there is hardlya doubt that we still need a wide interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary look at theproblems as well. Although sometimes inevitably imprecise in details, interdisciplinaryresearch can provide a fresh look at some old problems. Studying the origins and historyof the vocal polyphony and group singing, I found myself shifting into such nonmusicologicalspheres as, for example, physical anthropology, genetics,psycholinguistics, child development or the incidence of stuttering and dyslexia indifferent regions of the world. It is obvious that sometimes the problem we studydetermines the circle of the spheres we have to touch in order to address the core of theproblem. Unless, of course, we make a firm decision that wherever the solution of theproblem is, we are not going outside our sphere of expertise. I found my work to beincreasingly more connected to research in such topics as “gesture vs. vocal” languagetheories discussion, or research on the incidence of stuttering in East Asian and sub-