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299is not only a linguistic problem, the origin of vocal polyphony is not a musicologicalproblem only.Now we are ready to discuss these issues in more detail.Singing ApeNot everyone has a voice but everyone makes noises to communicate. I rememberwhen I lost my voice during a bad bout of influenza few years ago, I clicked my fingersto get attention from family members. A huge number of species, co-residing our planet,do not have voices at all. The buzzing of mosquitoes, for example, is not designed toscare us on a hot summer evening. It is an important means for mosquitoes to find eachother for the sake of future generation of little bloodsuckers.Sound perception and voice production are so intimately linked with each otherthat it is often overlooked that these two phenomena were acquired in very differentepochs of our evolutionary prehistory. Sound perception appeared at a very early stage inthe evolution of the animal kingdom. Even insects are equipped with organs of soundperception. Our vocal ability of sound production is much "younger" than the ability ofsound perception (“much younger” in this case is about 500 million years younger). Oneof the consequences of the non-synchronous development of organs of sound perceptionand voice production is that “...although the vocal tract has undergone significant changesin morphology over evolutionary time, our peripheral auditory system has remained in arelative state of stasis” (Hauser, 1996:219). In the evolutionary process a real voice(produced by the vocal chords) first appeared among amphibians. Insects and other livingbeings, that lack voice, communicate with sounds created by different parts of their body.Sound perception has always been more important to living beings than voiceproduction. Even if you are a teacher or a professional singer, you would not be spendingmore that 10-15 per cent of your total time talking or singing. According to Pease(1984:9) the average person talks about 12 minutes a day. OK, I agree that we all mayknow some exceptional individuals who do not fit this average, but anyway, our ears aremuch more active that our vocal tract, because our ears receive different sounds all thetime, even when asleep. Besides, we can produce only a relatively small range of soundsourselves, but we can easily distinguish thousands of different sounds that come to ourears from different sources every moment of our life.Evolutionary “asynchrony” is a powerful factor that affects our abilities oftenwithout realizing that the acting force behind some contemporary events and problems isour evolutionary past. For example, because of this “evolutionary asynchrony” soundperception is represented among animals (and humans) much better than voiceproduction. Let me briefly discuss three examples:“No, sorry, I can not sing!” As a music teacher and a choir leader for anumber of years, I have heard these words many times from my students, sometimesfrom very musically talented ones. Is this possible? Good musicians who cannot sing intune? Yes, it is possible. Some individuals (I believe some are among the readers of thisbook as well) can hear musical compositions and distinguish even the smallest errors inpitch during a performance, but they still cannot sing a simple melody in tune. Such