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261settlement history, and the most likely rout for this gigantic transcontinental migrationmust have been via Bering Strait. This does not rule out other routs, and in the light of theamazing tenacious traveling abilities of our ancestors we should not be very surprised ifthe strong evidence is found to confirm that human populations did reach America viamore than one route.Case Study # 13Vocal Polyphony in AncientCivilizations:Mesopotamia and MesoamericaOne of the main problems of the research of the early forms of vocal music is thatsinging does not fossilize. It is a different story with musical instruments. You candiscover different musical instruments in the archaeological remains, and studying themyou can receive plenty of useful information about the music that was played on theseinstruments. In case of the blown instruments you can sometimes even have the “firsthand” information about the scale system of the music that was played hundreds andthousand of years ago. In regards of singing the most you can learn from thearchaeological artifacts, are the paintings (or statuettes) of the people singing, sometimesin conjunction with playing instruments or dancing. Those interested in vocal polyphony(like myself) are always fascinated by the ancient drawings depicting group of peoplesinging together. And here come the unanswerable questions: were they singing inunison, or in harmony? And if they were singing in harmony, what kind of harmony orpolyphony was that?Are these questions really unanswerable? This “case study” discusses the methodthat could help us to read the archaeological records in search of the vocal polyphonictraditions of the ancient world.The method is very simple and straightforward, and is based on the parallelsbetween vocal and instrumental music.Readers might remember that this book was originally perceived, researched andwritten as a book wholly dedicated to the problems of vocal polyphony. Detailedinteraction between vocal and instrumental polyphony is a huge new sphere, which I wascarefully avoiding for two main reasons.(1) The scope of the book is already and understandably wide, andbringing the new information about musical instruments from hundredsof cultures from different parts of the world would make this bookalmost unreadable.(2) Although I have been actively researching the sphere of traditionalpolyphony for more that thirty years, my main interest always has beendirected towards the vocal polyphony. Therefore, I must say thatdespite the ironic fact that after I had been invited as a guest scholar-