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and of course, Sheree Reece from the Kean University, New Jersey, USA, for our longcooperation in researching the stuttering Chinese population in South-East Asia. The helpof Singaporean speech pathologist Selena Young was crucial in researching thetantalising (for me) issue of the prevalence of stuttering among Chinese populations, infinding the speech pathologists working with the Chinese populations and conducting thequestionnaire on the subject. My thanks should go also to the Singaporean Speech andHearing Association for their interest and help.I am very grateful to statistician Eric Van Bemmel from Melbourne for his criticalremarks, very important in the early stages of the development of my model, and to LynnNewman-Bertrand from the Emory University, Atlanta, whose support and efforts totranslate and publish my first book in English was an important factor for me in decidingto write this book in English; my gratitude to Bob Segrave’s dedicated help on the writtentext during the last stages of working on the text of this book is impossible to expresswith words.I am also very grateful to Christoph Maubach, Roger King, Grant Mathews, MaryCrooks and the members of the big community choir “Northern Voice” in Melbourne,Australia, as well as ensembles “Gorani”, “Golden Fleece”, “Multiphonies” and “WhyNot!” for having the privilege of singing with them for many long years and for theirsupport in gaining an important insight of joys and pitfalls of participating in a bigcommunity choir and smaller singing ensembles. Thanks to my students from theUnivesrity of Melbourne Daniel Techane, Jessica Na, Talita Muller and Eric Tjahja.Special thanks should go to our Australian friends Keith and Lynn Buffey and theirdaughters Sarah and Heather, for heroically coping with me and my wife both beingconstantly tied to our computers during our shared 2006 summer holidays at the beautifulocean beach in southern Victoria. Big thanks to Yuri Bakhtadze for helping creating thecombined graphic figure of acquisition of phonological system by American andJapanese children. I am very grateful to Viennese Phonogram Archive for making thematerials of Nuristan polyphony available to me.I am very grateful to my new country, Australia, and the endless possibilities ofscholarly progress it provides. I am endlessly grateful to my native Georgia, truly heavenon earth for those who love polyphonic singing.I am also very grateful to a huge group of scholars and musicians, some alreadygone to the “better world” and some alive, from Charles Darwin to the members of TheBeatles, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting and discussing a few topics I wouldlove to discuss with them, although whose ideas through their writings and recordingsmade such an impact on many aspect of my life as a scholar and as a musician.Thanks to all the readers of this book, and particularly to critical readers. Theyshould know that despite the big group of the most generous scholars and musicians,whose help I very much appreciate, I am solely responsible for all the mistakes.And finally, my very special thanks should go to the leading Russian andGeorgian physical anthropologists Valeri Pavlovich Alexeev and MalkhazAbdushelishvili, whose deep professional interest and long-lasting support was absolutelycrucial for the development of my model of the evolution of human choral singing,language and speech (particularly in the early stages). As a matter of fact, the ideas of theasynchronous shift to articulated speech in different human populations, and the possiblelink between the prevalence of stuttering and vocal polyphony were born during our long20