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325articulated elements, where the use of whistle and drum languages came from, and manyother, often neglected but important topics.Pinker is also correct in declaring that all neurologically normal humans have theability to acquire complex language, but not every normal human can carry a tune. I didmention earlier that not only some “non-musical humans”, but even great musicians (likeWagner) may have difficulty singing in tune. This fact of a relatively limited musicalityin humans is not a confirmation of the later origin and the evolutionary uselessness ofsinging. It is much more likely that this fact is a result of the loss of the survival value ofpitch control after the emergence of articulated speech for the last tens or hundreds ofthousands of years. Mithen’s suggestion that the Neanderthals had better musical abilitiesthan contemporary humans (Mithen, 2005:245) is evolutionarily very sound and issupported by the many documented cases of the loss of the traditions of vocal polyphonyin different regions of our planet. As a matter of fact, many animals ( like rats, or avianbirds) naturally have perfect pitch, rare even among professional musicians (Mithen,2005:300). The fact of much wider wide presence of perfect pitch among very younginfants also points to a gradual degradation of musical hearing during human evolution(ibid, 78-79).This may sound strange to some readers, but we, humans, are gradually losing ourmusical abilities. On the other hand, this process of decreasing musical abilities occurs inparallel with the increasing sophistication of professionalism in music during the wholecourse of the evolution of human civilization and musical culture. When any of the treatscommon for the major part of the population becomes lost, there is a good chance thatsome individual members of the society will become experts in this vanishing area andwill ga in their living and social status in serving other members of society. This is thebeginning of professionalism. Pygmies, possibly the most musical population of ourplanet today, do not have professional musicians in their societies.Before the advent of articulated speech, pitch control was evolutionarily a veryimportant trait and the everyday fight for survival must have favored individuals with agood sense of rhythm and good pitch control. After the great pre-articulated epoch ofhominid and human communication came to an end, pitch control lost its survival valueand started gradually deteriorating and vanishing from human populations. 40 000 years(at least) is quite a big period of time for any genetic trait to disappear when it falls out of“favor” regarding direct survival benefits.The fact that our musical abilities are still with us must be attributed to two mainfactors:(1) First of all, the resilience of human musical abilities comes from themillions of years of active use and “genetic sharpening” through theselection of hominid and human musical abilities as the primary meansof everyday communication and one of the central means of groupcohesion and predatory control;(2) Secondly, our musical abilities were survived by a few functions thatcould not be replaced by articulated speech. These functions includecommunal singing and dancing, emotional unity through following thesame rhythm, and enjoyment of the hearing of musical sounds. These