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318The origin of language in human evolution was a crucial point in becoming aHomo sapiens, or a thinking primate, or if you prefer, a human. As Grover Krantzpointed out in his commentary on Livingstone’s article about the singingAustralopithecine, the crucial element of language is the “neurological capacity forsymbolic thought, the ability to form mental images of things not being perceived. It isonly of secondary importance just how these thoughts are communicated” (Krantz,1973:26).We all know instances where language functions without speech, although wemay not always pay attention to this fact. For example, people, who communicate bymeans of sign language use fully developed language, but not speech. Communicationwith the Morse coding system of the early telegraph, based on the use of dots andhyphens, or the system of marine signal flags between ships are different examples of theuse of language without the speech. Speech is just one of the mediums of language,although by far the most economical, fast and universally employed one in all humansocieties. Historically speech was almost exclusively the only medium for humanlanguage, as other mediums of language were mostly developed very late in humanhistory . Sign language was officially developed after 1755 in France when Abbe deL’Epee founded a public school for deaf children. Initially it was based on the signs thatwere used by mute and deaf individuals in the streets of Paris. The Morse coding systemwas developed in the 1830s by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail. The system of the MarineSignal Flags was developed in 1855 in England by the British Board of Trade. Takinginto account the overwhelmingly wider use of speech in human society and history, it isnot accidental that sometimes scholars do not make any difference between “language”and “speech”. For example, Dean Falk famously declared: “speech is language” (Falk,1980a:780, commentary to Krantz, 1980), a declaration with which at least some scholarswould find it hard to agree.Pitch language, based on pitch modulations, or musilanguage (the term of StevenBrown, 2000), seems to be the only alternative medium of language that can competewith speech in universality and chronological depths in human history. According to therange o f dates that different scholars suggest, speech developed only within the last 40000 – 300 000 years, which leaves a few million years of language development mostlybased on pitch modulations among hominids and a series of archaic forms of Homosapiens . But unlike sign language, Morse or Marine Signal Flags, pitch language used thesame vocal channel that was later employed by speech, which is why, after theintroduction of speech, a much more efficient medium for language, all known humansocieties shifted to speech, and today it is difficult to find traces of the “past glory” of thepitch language.Fortunately, there are some traces of pitch language in contemporary languagesand societies. I am talking about the use of the system of pitch modulations, naturallyemployed in human communication. Here is a brief account of three of such instanceswhen very precise ideas were communicated by means of pitch only:• Whistle languages.“Eusebio Martinez was observed one day standing in front of his hut, whistling toa man a considerable distance away. The man was passing on the trail below, going tomarket to sell a load of corn leaves which he was carrying. The man answered Eusebio’s