272. The Baseline Scenarios -- 48: The Migration

Since contrapuntal polyphony is a highly distinctive feature of Pygmy/Bushmen style (P/B), along with hocket/ interlock, yodel, etc., and clear echoes of this style can be found among indigenous peoples in so many different parts of the world, we can conclude that some form of P/B must have been carried to Asia via HMC (the Hypothetical Migrant Culture, i.e., the culture of the original Out of Africa migrants) and from there to enclaves of traditional culture in Oceania, Europe and the Americas.

If that were the case, and we accept the mainstream view of a steady progression of the migrant lineage through southern Asia from west to east, as straightforwardly reflected in the genetics and culture of the indigenous peoples currently living in this region, then we are forced to assume that something drastic must have happened at a very early stage of their journey which caused them to lose this musical tradition, since there is no trace of it anywhere in West or South Asia. Such a sudden loss shouldn't, in itself, be surprising and in fact many such abrupt cultural shifts are known to have occurred in human history.

What is surprising is the sudden reappearance of strikingly similar musical practices in Southeast Asia and beyond. From a multiregionalist perspective, this could be explained, I suppose, as one of many almost miraculous instances of "convergent evolution," where similar circumstances cause humans in different parts of the world, with no possibility of contact, to develop very similar traditions independently, such as tool types, hunting and gathering techniques, and even language, which, according to the original multiregional model, would have been independently invented many times and in many different places. The idea is that the pressures of adaptation, combined with certain universal, inborn properties of "the human mind," would combine to lead all hominins in more or less the same direction, with "racial" differences and language families seen as residues of the original state of primal separateness.

Regardless of what one may think of such a theory, the notion that an important tradition can suddenly be lost at a certain point in history and then, thousands of miles and God knows how many years later, be revived out of thin air, is, to say the least, difficult to reconcile with the Out of Africa model, in which all roads tend to lead backward to a single source.

We've already considered a very similar gap with respect to language (see Post 259 et seq.). Aside from the relatively recent Semitic, Berber and Egyptian branches of the Afro-Asiatic family, practically every language in Africa is a tone language. Since there is no evidence whatsoever of anything other than tone languages in Africa's past, and Africa appears to be the homeland of modern humans, we have good reason to assume 1. that the first language must have been a tone language; 2. that our common ancestors (HPB) would have spoken a tone language; 3. that the Out of Africa migrants (HMP) would have spoken a tone language.

The idea that language may originally have had pitch as an important phonemic and/or morphemic differentiator is, in fact, consistent with the theory I've already explored earlier on this blog (see Post 53 et seq), that "music and language share the same roots and developed in tandem." If the cultivation of tonal awareness were an important aspect of both speech and music from the start, then the ubiquity of tone language in Africa is no longer a mystery. But what could have happened when HMP left Africa for points East?

When we turn our attention to the southern route, from the Bab el Mendab to the Arabian peninsula and beyond, tone languages all but completely disappear -- until we reach Southeast Asia. And once again we are faced with the conundrum of an important cultural tradition that suddenly vanishes, only to reappear thousands of miles and many years later. And lo and behold, tonal languages reappear, apparently, at the exact same point that our P/B-related "African signature" reappears.

It might be a good idea, at this point, to review what Edward Sapir had to say about the meaning of gapped distributions:

For chronological purposes, cases of the interrupted distribution of a culture element are of particular importance. In a general way, a culture element whose area of distribution is a broken one must be considered as of older date, other things being equal, than a culture element diffused over an equivalent but continuous area. The reason for this is that in the former case we have to add to the lapse of time allowed for the diffusion of the element over its area of distribution the time taken to bring about the present isolation of the two areas, a time which may vary from a few years or a generation to a number of centuries. . . [T]he interrupted distribution of a culture element gives us a minimum relative date for the origin of the culture element itself. The element must have arisen prior to the event or series of events that resulted in the geographical isolation of the two areas ("Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture, a Study in Method." Geological Survey Memoir 90: No. 13, Anthropological Series. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau (1916), p. 41).

In other words, the gap we find in the musical evidence, which might or might not be related to the gap I think we see in the linguistic evidence, may not be due to the sudden disappearance and subsequent reappearance of a "cultural element," but to the element (or elements) in question having "arisen prior to the event or series of events that resulted in the geographical isolation of the two areas."

(to be continued . . . )