who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

298established after our human ancestors descended from the trees to the ground. This waslong before the appearance of Homo sapiens. Humans did not create polyphony. We mayeven say that vocal polyphony was a major contributor in creating human society andeven human language and intelligence.• Why was the phenomenon of vocal polyphony born?We could ask this question in other words as well: what was the survival value ofpolyphonic group singing? According to the proposed model, vocal polyphony (moreprecisely, the inseparable unity of group singing and dancing) was born primarily as astrategy for the group defence of their lives and their territories from the major predatorsof Africa. This defence was badly needed after our human ancestors moved from thetrees to the ground and exposed themselves – slow-running and not-so-well-armedprimates – to the formidable African ground predators. The best evolutionary chance forour human ancestors to survive at the dangerous “ground level” was the strengthening ofsocial bonds within social groups, increasing group size and a new impressive “liondance”. Choral singing at this stage (before the advance of articulated speech) must havebeen a means of social bonding and stress relief as well, but I suggest that the primaryevolutionary function of choral singing was a strategic defence against major Africanpredators.• Why is the tradition of vocal polyphony disappearing?According to the proposed model, after humans shifted to articulated speech,vocal communication was marginalized as a redundant system of communication. Mindthat I strictly separate language and speech. As a result, human musical abilities started todecline. Early selection for better singing abilities and sense of rhythm was replaced byselection for precise articulation. Primordial polyphony gradually shifted to the realms ofhuman musical “culture” and started disappearing millennia–by millennia, century–bycentury, and decade–by decade.• Why is the contemporary distribution of the tradition of vocal polyphonyso uneven throughout different continents and regions of the world?According to the proposed model, the uneven distribution of vocal polyphonythroughout our planet is connected to the peculiarities of the origins of articulated speechin different human populations. Articulated speech appeared long after the emergence ofhuman language and intelligence, and long after humans left their homeland in Africa.According to the suggested model, different populations of Homo sapiens shifted toarticulated speech in different epochs. Therefore, the process of the disappearance ofvocal polyphony started in some populations earlier than in others. According to thesuggested model, East Asians and Australian Aborigines were the first to shift toarticulated speech (or spoken language), followed by European and sub-Saharan Africanpopulations.Discussing these and other related topics, we will often leave the borders ofmusicology, sometimes going into problems that are much bigger than the problems ofthe origins of vocal polyphony. I am sure that, in the same way as the origin of language