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182East Asia via the southern parts of Asia and the Caucasus (Schneider, 1940, 1951, 1961,1969)• Joseph Yasser noted the correlation of the scale systems and the type ofparallelism in polyphony. He wrote about the connections of parallel fourths and fifthswith the anhemitonic scales, and parallel thirds with the diatonic scales (Yasser, 1932).This type of correlation of scale system and type of polyphony was later widely acceptedas the explanation of sub-Saharan polyphony (see Gerhard Kubik, 1968).• Siegfried Nadel studied Georgian traditional polyphony and came up with theidea (before Schneider) that Georgian traditional polyphony possibly contributed to theorigins of medieval professional polyphony (Nadel, 1933).• Curt Sachs deciphered the earliest written example of music, recorded on aSumerian tablet, and came to the conclusion that the recorded music represents anexample of polyphonic music (Sachs, 1937).• Charles Seeger observed interesting parallels between the shape-note books,African-American spirituals and the early European examples of medieval polyphony(Seeger, 1940).• Hans Hickman came to the conclusion that the ancient Egyptians had a traditionof vocal drone polyphony (Hickman, 1952, 1970).• Jaap Kunst is the author of one of the best known and one of the mostcontroversial hypotheses in ethnomusicology about the possible links between Balkanand Indonesian secondal singing, as a result of ethnic and cultural contacts between thesetwo regions (Kunst, 1954);• Yvette Grimaud together with Gilbert Rouget noted the closeness of thepolyphonic traditions of the Central African Pygmies and the South African Bushmen(Grimaud & Rouget, 1957).• Erich Stockman was the author of one of the first comparative research articlesinvolving Albanian and Georgian polyphonic songs (Stockman, 1957).• Paul Collaer studied European polyphonic traditions and came to the conclusionthat European professional polyphony came to life as a result of the impulses from theancient vocal polyphony of European peoples (Collaer, 1960);• Bruno Nettl discussed the available information of polyphony among NorthAmerican Indians and suggested that the scattered elements of drone polyphony couldindicate that (1) these isolated pockets of polyphony were remnants of the earlier widerdistribution of polyphonic singing, or (2) that North American Indians were on the vergeof developing their own polyphony from an initial monophonic tradition (Nettl, 1961).• Oscar Elschek conducted a comparative study of European polyphonictraditions. He distinguished six main areas (east Slavs, Carpathian area, Alps,Mediterranean area (the Balkans, Sardinia, Portugal), the Caucasus and Iceland), andcame to the conclusion that polyphony is not an European phenomenon (Elschek, 1963)• Alan Lomax, director and the main force behind the “Cantometric” project,wrote about the particular importance of social cohesiveness and the absence of maledomination for the societies that practice polyphonic singing (Lomax, 1968). Heconsidered the West European polyphonic traditions to be an ancient survival thatsurvived in mountains, islands, and generally, “on the fringes of Western Europe”(Lomax, 1971:236).