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317among hominids. The situation of one species teaching higher language to anotherspecies is evolutionally artificial. Our ancestors had not been taught a higher language bysomeone else. They developed higher language themselves simultaneously with thedevelopment of their cognitive abilities and gaining cortical control over theirvocalizations.Advantages of the vocal medium over gestures are well known and widelyaccepted by proponents of both vocal and gestural theories, although the proponents ofgestural theory prefer to talk about speech in this context. Let us listen to one of the mainproponents of gestural theory, Gordon Hewes: “There are several obvious advantages ofspeech over manual gestures, including the fact that the vocal auditory channel ispractically a clear channel for communication, whereas the visual channel, as the primemodality for human and all higher primate perception of the external world, is subject tocontinual interference from non-language sources. Unambiguous decoding of gesturalmessages requires a fairly neutral background, good illumination, absence of interveningobjects (including foliage), relatively short distance between transmitter and receiver, andfrontal orientation. Making manual gestures is slower than speaking, requires moreenergy, and prevents the use of the hands for any other activity while the message isbeing transmitted; decoding sign-language message is also slower, even among traineddeaf persons” (Hewes, 1973:10).All these facts were provided by Hewes to prove the necessity of later change ofgestural medium into speech, but it is logical to ask, why would our ancestors shift from aprimary vocal channel to gestural communication in the first place, when it is clear thatalmost the same long list of advantages over the manual gestures are characteristic notonly for contemporary speech, but for an archaic vocal communication as well (see alsoCarstairs-McCarthy, 199:103-4)?Pitch-Based Language:Singing, Whistling, DrummingAlthough human language and speech today seems inseparable, scholarsgenerally agree that they are essentially and chronologically very different phenomena.Language could have existed long before the emergence of speech. Despite this generalagreement, not every scholar makes a clear distinction between language and speech,which is why experts often complain that it is not clear whether some authors make anydistinction between these two phenomena.I want to stress from the very beginning that the difference between languageand speech is absolutely crucial for the suggested model. I fully agree with the biggroup of scholars who hold that language must have existed long before the emergence ofarticulated speech (for example, Krantz, 1980; Byrne, 1995:148-49; Armstrong et al.1995). Therefore, we will first discuss the origins of language from the musical point ofview. We will discus the problem of the emergence of speech much later, in the contextof the unevendistribution of polyphonic singing traditions in different human populationsall around the world.