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268continuity for few thousand years, show startling structural closeness to this(Mesopotamian) type of polyphony, with the excessive use of the harmonic intervals ofseconds, fourths and fifths, and with a relatively limited use of the drone polyphony.They employ mostly parallel and ostinato type polyphony in three-part vocal texture. Itmight be interesting for the readers to know that the closeness of certain elements ofSvanetian and Su merian culture has been noted for about a century ago. Sachs wroteabout the survival of the Sumerian type of harp in Georgia (more precisely in Svaneti,where it is still in use. Sachs, 1937:98). One of the hypothesis link the isolated Sumerianlanguage to Georgian, and particularly the most archaic Svanetian language (see thereview in Gordeziani, 1985). There are also promising linguistic parallels with Sumerianlanguage and mythology in Svanetian songs and names for the places as well. I do notwant to go into details into this topic, obviously the theme for another multidisciplinarystudy.To conclude this section, we can say that the (1) examples of notated music fromthe ancient Sumerians and Hurrians (most likely of the polyphonic music, as suggestedby Sachs and Kilmer), (2) existing tradition of choir singing in Sumerian temples, (3) thepresence of non-logical octaves and double octaves in Sumerian three-part music, betterexplained by the vocal character of this polyphony, (3) survival of ancient vocalpolyphony in isolated mountain regions of Caucasia and Balkans, as well as ancientpolyphony of Bahrain pearl-divers (all of them having deep connection with the AncientMesopotamian civilizations) , (4) much less probability of Sumerians to record onlyinstrumental part without recording the all-important vocal part, (5) invention of theprecise system on notation, better tool for recording of polyphonic music, and (6) eventhe possibility of more direct links between Sumerians and Svanetians, dwellers ofwestern Georgian mountainous region, famous for their unbroken cultural heritage andancient three-part polyphony with seconds, fourths and fifths; together with thepresence of the double blown musical instruments in Ancient Mesopotamia, stronglyconnected to the cultures with vocal polyphonic traditions, and finally, all this argumentscoupled with the general historical tendency of the disappearance of the traditions ofvocal polyphony give me grounds to propose that at least some peoples of the AncientMesopotamia (Sumerians and Hurrians among them) had a tradition of vocal polyphony,and that at least some of the first recorded examples of human musical culture from the3 rd –2 nd millennia BC represent the examples of vocal polyphony.Ancient Mesoamerica represents quite a different story. Unlike theAncient Mesopotamia, we do not have (at least so far) any examples of recorded musicfrom this region, and the written sources are not so deep and rich. On the other hand,Ancient Mesoamerica is arguably the richest region of double blown musicalinstruments, true heaven for music archaeologists. Therefore our discussion willconcentrate more around the mentioned earlier connections between the vocal polyphonyand the double blown musical instruments.Multiple duct flutes and the problem of polyphony became one of the populartopics of the scholarly discussions and publications, particularly in the 1960s. Part of thescholars suggested that Ancient Mesoamerican civilizations knew polyphony, but there issome skepticism as well. Let us listen to Dale Olsen from the Florida State University: