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320communication, but the use of a purely pitch-based whistle language in a fewcontemporary human societies is an important fact that should not be overlooked.• “Language” of African drums(or “African Talking Drums”) is another instance of the use of a purely pitchcomponent for communication. Unlike whistling, which could have been present in ourdistant hominid ancestors, the drum language of sub-Saharan Africans could be arelatively late (compared to singing of whistling) phenomenon. The use of musicalinstrument points to this. Despite this, the existence of drum languages also proves thatpitch-only based communication can function in human society. A very interesting detailof African Talking Drums” is that different African tribes, who speak different languages,often u se a more universal Drum Language, which sometimes employs the earlier,already extinct words and expressions of the local languages (Crystal, 1987:401).It is pity that in many ways the innovative and insightful book of Steven Mithen“Singing Neanderthal” does not even mention either “whistle languages”, or “AfricanTalking Drums” which could further promote his idea of the importance of music (pitchbasedcommunication) in the evolution of human language. The reason for this silencecould be the following: Mithen, despite his genuine efforts to promote the idea of theimportance of music in the evolution of human language, sees music only as a “nonreferentialsystem of communication” (Mithen, 2005:22), without even discussing thereferential potential of pitch-based communication.• Tone languagesalso demonstrate the importance of the tone (pitch-based) component in humanlanguages. If whistle and drum languages are present only in a limited number of regionsof the world, tone languages constitute in fact the majority of world languages. Webriefly discussed the nature of tone languages in the first part of this book in relation ofsub-African parallel polyphony. The tone component is very important for both themorphology and the syntax. The lexical use of tone is widespread in all tone languages –in South-East Asian and African tone languages – and the grammatical use of tones, suchas singular and plural forms and present and past tenses is “typical of many languages ofAfrica” (Cruttenden, 1986:9).Speaking about the use of tone in languages, there is hardly a language in theworld that does not make any use of tone and intonation. Even the speakers of English, anon-tone language, use different intonations to form interrogatives in statements ineveryday speech (like the difference between “Let’s go” and “Let’s go?”).It is very important to note that in tone languages, as well as in other nonarticulatedmeans of pitch communication (whistle and drum languages) pitch contourhas nothing to do with the emotional content usually attributed to music andsinging. Here the pitch element assists articulation in conveying arbitrarily designedprecise meanings. An emotional element of tone is also present in tone languages, but itis independent of the lexical and grammatical meanings. So, regarding the use of tonesin tone languages, we may say that pitch was employed as a double-component system,overlaid on each other: (1) the first component has a referential lexical (and sometimesgrammatical) function, and (2) the second component has a general-emotional, non-