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249that there is hardly a single documented case of the evolution of polyphony frommonophony. Therefore I look very skeptically at the possibility of someone “developing”polyphony from monophonic singing traditions unless the case is well documented. Andof course, there is also the uniquely isolated position of Ainu language, culture, andparticularly physical type, mentioned earlier. These unique features of Ainu culture andphysical type suggest that Ainus made a long trip to arrive to the Kuril Islands and NorthJapan. From the very first meetings with the Ainus it was clear that they were of thedifferent ethnic origins from the prevalent population of the East Asia. Without goinginto detail, we could mention, for example, generally very scarce development of thefacial hair in East Asian populations. Ainus, on the contrary, have the highest level of thedevelopment of the facial hair in the world. Their hair form is also different. This feature,together with few other unique features, point towards possible southern and westernconnections: Australian Aboriginal and European populations are known for their thickfacial hair. So these two directions are the possible source of Ainu ethnic origins.Westwards (European) connections were more prominent in the earlier scholarly works,and southwards connections became more prominent in the later period (see the reviewin: Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994:231-232). Contemporary scholars often disregard thephysical differences of Ainus and unite them with other East Asian populations (ibid,232).If we take into account the unique polyphony of Ainu people, Australianconnections must be ruled out, as Australian Aboriginal singing traditions are one of themost monophonic in the world. The same is with the East Asian populations, carriers ofthe most monophonic singing culture among human populations. Talking about thesouthwards connections, from the musical point of view it would be more plausible toconnect Ainu polyphony to the polyphony of the indigenous Southeast Asian populations.This population constitutes the big part of national minorities of South China andVietnam, as well part of populations of other Southeast Asian countries. Their vocalmusic is quite prominently polyphonic, and vocal polyphony of the Taiwanese aboriginalpeoples (by the way geographically the closest polyphonic tradition to the Ainus), are agood example of their vocal polyphonic traditions. Although musically this connectionmakes a perfect sense, physical features of Ainus do not seem to support these(Taiwanese and South East Asian) connections.The only connection, that does not contradict the fact of the presence ofpolyphony in Ainu singing traditions, as well as their physical features, is the connectionsto European traditional polyphony and population. In the previous “Case Studies” wehave already seen that there is a strong possibility (supported not only by musical, but thecombination of archaeological, physical anthropological, and written sources) that thecarriers of old European vocal polyphony came as far east as Central Asia and WestMongolia. Valeri Alexeev was sure that archaeological and physical anthropological datasuggest that European populations came very far in their earlier migrations, reaching theeasternmost fringes of Eurasia, and maybe even going further via the Bering Strait to theAmerican continent (See about this later).Musically speaking, Ainu polyphony is not so obviously European, as Nuristanpolyphony. Out of two most important elements – (1) drone and (2) dissonant harmoniesAinu polyphony does not use the drone (well, almost – see the examples of Ainupolyphony from the first part of this book), although dissonant harmonies (the same