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244disappearance of the polyphonic tradition. Heterophony is a characteristic mostly of theEastern European Slavic traditions, but not for many other archaic traditions ofpolyphony of Europe. The canon is in a same way very rare or absent among mostEuropean polyphonic traditions. Therefore, the “loyalty” of Nuristan polyphony to thesimple drone polyphony with secondal clashes suggests closer ties of the Nuristantradition to the ancient European tradition of polyphony than sutartines].(9) Some Lithuanian sutartines sub-types display an obvious influence of theEuropean professional style, while there are hardly any traces of the influence ofEuropean professional music on Nuristan polyphony. [Taking into account the culturalgeographicenvironment, of course, it was much more natural for the sutartines to beaffected by European professional polyphony than for the Nuristan, who was so far awayfrom Europe. At the same time, Nuristan was fiercely fighting for many centuries againsttheir conversion to Islam, and it is fascinating that Nuristan traditional three-partpolyphony hardly displays any serious signs of the influence from the West Asianmelismatic singing style, suggesting that the level of the isolation and preservation of theancient polyphonic tradition in Nuristan was very high. The recordings show thatNuristanians also sing songs that belong to the monodic world of West Asia, but thissinging style does not show signs of integration with the traditional Nuristan three-partdrone polyphony, and must be the result of the changes that were introduced since“Kafiristan” became “Nuristan” in 1896].(10) And finally, sharing the fate of many other polyphonic traditions, Lithuaniansutartines was completely lost as a folk tradition, while Nuristan polyphony is stillactively functioning in a society. [We may again explain this by the difference of thecultural-geographic environments between East Europe and the almost Central AsianHindukush mountains, although we need to remember, that despite the fact of thedisappearance of the secondal polytonal sutartines, the tradition of drone polyphony(although heavily influenced by European professional music) is still very much alive inthe same Lithuania. There must be something very vital in the drone type of polyphonyitself.]To summarize, we may say that even compared to the Lithuanian sutartines,Nuristan traditional polyphony shows an array of features characteristic to the ancientEuropean tradition of vocal polyphony.Let us now discuss the geographic factor of the possible connections of Nuristanpolyphony with the ancient European family of vocal polyphony.Is it possible to find the carriers of the ancient drone polyphony so far east fromEurope as Nuristan? In a previous “Case Study”, dedicated to overtone singing, wediscussed the possibility of the presence of the carriers of the ancient European dronepolyphony in Central Asia. Archaeological, physical anthropological, musical andChinese written sources all point to the reality of this possibility. The most importantregions for the distribution of overtone singing (like Tuva and West Mongolia) are abouttwice as far from the same Caucasia as Nuristan. Therefore, in the context of all this, it isnot at all improbable to suggest that Nuristan polyphony is a member of the ancientEuropean drone polyphonic family, and even more, taking into account their extremegeographic isolation, Nuristan vocal polyphony could be one of the best isolated andbest preserved member of the ancient European polyphonic family.