Chapter Fifteen: Upcoast, Downcoast -- from Asia to the Americas

According to most anthropologists, humans first entered the Americas via a land bridge linking northeast Asia with Alaska. Certain dissenters have nevertheless pointed to evidence suggesting more direct trans-Pacific links. Among the most notable was Paul Rivet, founder of the Musée de l'Homme, who argued that “the dark skinned people of New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and Fiji, as well as the inhabitants of the Polynesian archipelagos—Maoris, crossed the Pacific Ocean in their canoes, and arrived in Central and South America, from where their descendants spread all across the Americas” (Paul Rivet, New World Encyclopedia Online).

Rivet’s theory was based on physical similarities, such as bone structure and blood type; similar traditions, such as head hunting; and certain linguistic parallels. Other investigators, such as Joseph Needham, have noted striking cultural similarities suggesting an ancient Chinese influence on groups such as the Northwest Coast Indians and the high cultures of Central and South America.  Over the years a considerable body of evidence for trans-Pacific contacts of various kinds has accumulated, but the topic remains controversial in the extreme.¹ 

Musical Cognates

An especially compelling argument for trans-Pacific migrations could be made on the basis of musical evidence alone. Various wind ensembles involving pipes, panpipes, flutes, whistles, horns and trumpets abound not only in Africa, Southeast Asia and Melanesia, as we have learned, but also Central and South America. Ensembles of this sort are not found north of the Rio Grande, suggesting that carriers of these traditions may have arrived via the south Pacific.

Cross cultural comparisons by some of the early pioneers of ethnomusicology tended to support the trans-Pacific model. In a review of Erich von Hornbostel’s 1911 paper “Über ein akustisches Kriterium für Kulturzusammenhänge” (“On an acoustic criterion for cultural association”), no less an authority than Edward Sapir expresses his conviction in no uncertain terms. For Sapir, Hornbostel’s comparative study of Melanesian and Brazilian panpipe tunings proved that

the pan-pipes of Melanesia and South America are historically connected, not merely because they are pan-pipes but because their detailed musical construction is too closely alike to be explained by convergent evolution.  Here at last we have clear evidence of a cultural contact between these two parts of the world (Collected Works of Edward Sapir, de Gruyter, 1994 (1913), p. 158).

Since musicologists of that era were fixated on tuning systems and scales, they paid little attention to either the manner in which the instruments are performed or how they sound when played together. If they had, the trans-Pacific associations would have been even more convincing. In almost all cases, from Africa to Melanesia to the Americas, the music played by such instruments is divided into at least two hocketing/interlocking parts. In the case of pipes, whistles, trumpets and horns, each instrument is capable of producing only one or two notes, but even in panpipe or flute ensembles all instruments perform in closely interactive hocketed interlock. 

Unlike Western counterpoint, but very similar to certain practices found in Africa, what we hear is not the intertwining of independent lines, but a resultant melodic/ polyphonic texture produced by the juxtaposition of interlocking parts. In almost all cases, from both Melanesia and the Americas, the instruments are symbolically divided into two complementary groups, one male, the other female.

To get a visceral sense of how closely some of these very widespread practices resemble one another, let’s hear some examples from both sides of the ocean:

Hocketing bark horns of the Aitape, northern coast of New Guinea: Audio Example 61: Pig Hunting Song 

Hocketing bark horns of the Piaroa Indians of the Upper Orinoco, Venezuela: Audio Example 62: Piaroa Horns  (from The Columbia Library of World Music, Venezuela, recorded by Pierre Gaisseau).

Panpipes of the the Buma people, on the island of Malaita, in the Solomons: Audio Example 63: Panpipes of Buma (from Spirit of Melanesia).

Compare the above with this closely interlocking pipe duet of the Cuna Indians, from Panama (as already presented in Chapter Nine): Audio Example 23:Cuna Pipes   (Primitive Music of the World, Folkways).

Curiously Andean-sounding panpipes of the Are’are people of the Solomon Islands (as already presented in Chapter Nine): Audio Example 22:Are’are pipers (from Solomon Islands:The Sound of Bamboo, recorded by Buaoka & Sekine).

Compare with these Andean panpipes, from Bolivia: Audio Example 64: Kacharpaya Kantu (from Bolivia-Panpipes – UNESCO, track 4).

Hocketing flute duet, Sepik Region, New Guinea: Audio Example 65: Sepik Flutes (from Spirit of Melanesia).

Hocketing flute duet, Iawa Indians, upper Amazon Basin, Peru: Audio Example 66: The Mayantu (from Music of the Upper Amazon, Lyrichord LL157, recorded by Bertrand Flornoy).

Compare the above with this duet from the Madang region of northern New Guinea: Audio Example 67: Nubia-Sissimungum (from Windim Mambu:Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea, vol. 2, track 5, recorded by Ragnar Johnson).

Here’s a somewhat different sounding flute duet, featuring repeated tones, also from Madang: Audio Example 68: Gomkail Flutes (from Windim Mambu:Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea, vol. 2, track 1).

Compare with the repeated tones in this flute duet, from the Camayura of the Amazon basin, Brazil: Audio Example 69: Camayura Sacred Flutes (from Anthology of Central and South American Indian Music, Smithsonian Folkways 4542).

In both New Guinea and South America, such flutes are played in pairs, with the larger considered “male” and the smaller “female.” According to Ragnar Johnson, who recorded the Madang flutes, “each player blows in turn; one flute is blown and the other alternates. It requires all the air in a man’s lungs to blow a flute, so one player inhales while the other is blowing his flute.” The Madang flutes “are made, owned, played and kept secret by adult men. 

Women and children are forbidden to see the flutes and are told that the cries of the flutes are the voices of actual spirits.” (Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea, 1999, accompanying pamphlet, p. 1) Essentially the same taboo applies in South America as well -- paralleled by very similar restrictions regarding the Mbuti Pygmy molimo trumpet, also considered a spirit voice and also forbidden to women and children (Turnbull 1961:82).

  

Remarkably close similarities can be found among percussion ensembles as well, since very similar types of slit drums and stamping tubes are found abundantly in both Southeast Asia/Melanesia and South/Central America.

Canonic/Echoic Style

The musical “cognates” are not limited to instrumental music. Many groups in both regions sing together in roughly coordinated canons or rounds, a highly distinctive style I’ve referred to as “Canonic/Echoic” (“haplogroup” B1 in the Phylogenetic Tree presented in Appendix B). This style, based on the interlocked imitation of similar motives to produce a kind of “echo” effect sounds to me like a variant of certain types of Pygmy/Bushmen canonic interlock (“haplogroup” A4), the principal difference being that the latter is rhythmically precise and tightly coordinated while the former tends to be rhythmically imprecise and uncoordinated. 

Since both styles are based on essentially the same musical principle, the temporal displacement of a single motive or melody among two or more singers, “Canonic/Echoic” style (C/E) could be a development from P/B, as suggested by the Phylogenetic Tree – and in that sense we could say that it too, like the instrumental styles discussed above, carries the “African Signature.”  On the other hand, I am not aware of any examples of C/E anywhere in Africa, suggesting a post-bottleneck origin.

Let’s first listen to the sort of thing that might have served as its prototype, a three part Mbuti Pygmy “canon” in classic P/B style: Audio Example 70: Amabele-o-iye (from On the Edge of the Ituri Forest, recorded by Hugh Tracey, track 16).

The following imitative duet, from the Kaluli people of Bosavi, in the New Guinea highlands, is quite similar, but loosely coordinated rhythmically, as is characteristic of C/E: Audio Example 71: Ulahi and Eyobo sing at a waterfall (from Bosavi: Rainforest Music From Papua New Guinea, Smithsonian Folkways, recorded by Steven Feld). According to Steven Feld, the Kaluli refer to this type of singing as “lift-up-over sounding.”

Compare with this similarly ragged “canon” from an Iawa Indian ceremony, in Peru: Audio Example 72: The Kaputio (from Music of the Upper Amazon, Lyrichord LL157, recorded by Bertrand Flornoy).

Here’s a very similar duet, a lullaby from the ‘Are’are of the Solomon Islands: Audio Example 73: Lullabye (from The Solomon Islands:Sounds of Bamboo, track 36).

Finally, let’s listen to one more example of C/E, from Venezuela, a trio of Warao shamans, loosely echoing one another: Audio Example 74: Hoarotu Shamans (recording by Dale Olson, accompanying the book, Music of Many Cultures, Elizabeith May, Ed.).

A Distinctive “Style-Trace”

In a little-known but extremely important Cantometric study of Amerindian song style, Alan Lomax’s anthropological collaborator, Edwin Erickson, identifies a substyle corresponding quite closely with that illustrated above, which he designates “Specialized South America-Mexico.”  On the basis of strictly statistical, computer-based research (Erickson was an anthropologist, not a musicologist), he describes it as follows:

The bounding of the style domain, the distribution of its diagnostic traits and the patterning of resemblances all suggest that the underlying style trace has isolated a very old and generalized diffusion sphere . . .

If the appearance of these distinctive traits, especially in multiples, were the result, for example, of independent invention, or elaboration of old and broadcast American Indian styles, there would be no reason to expect the sharp bounding of the distribution area. (The Song Trace: Song Styles and the Ethnohistory of Aboriginal America. Ph. D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1969-70, p. 301.)

After considerable discussion of various anthropological and archaeological ramifications of this style, he speculates regarding a possible association with the panpipe:

The distribution [of panpipes] in South America, thus, goes beyond the compass of the specialized South American style domain, but not very far beyond. . . Clearly, pair-playing of panpipes is a powerful sorting device for specialized South American style (pp. 329, 331).

The Homogeneous North

The musical picture presented so far is completely different from that of North America, or to be more precise, America north of Mexico, where there are basically three instrument types, the drum, the rattle and the flute, and a remarkably homogenous vocal style, characteristic of the great majority of native North American tribal groups, regardless of language, subsistence type, environment, etc.

[Added 3-25-11: Exceptions can be found among the tribal groups of the Northwest Coast, where we find a wider variety of musical instruments than is typical for North America, and also certain groups in California, notably the Hupa, who employ a form of shouted hocket resembling certain types of Ainu vocalizing. Panpipes made from metal or ceramic materials have been unearthed by archaeologists in so-called “Mound Builder” sites, dating roughly from 3,000 to 1,000 years ago. There is strong evidence that these instruments, along with many other artifacts and customs, such as head flattening, ear plugs, the use of mica, etc., even the practice of mound building itself, could have originated in Mexico, specifically the La Venta culture of Veracruz (see Silverberg 1968:222-27).]

At least six principal  sub-families have been identified for this region: Northwest Coast-Eskimo; California-Yuman; Great Basin; Athabascan; Plains-Pueblo; Eastern Woodlands (Nettl 1965:157-162). Songs from each such family can often be distinguished from the others by certain specific traits, such as the wide-ranging “terraced” melodies of the Plains and Pueblos, the melodic rise characteristic of the California-Yuman family, or the call and response patterns typical of the Eastern Woodlands.

Especially interesting is the manner in which characteristic “nonsense” vocables are deployed in almost all of these traditions, so that, for example, a Navajo song almost always ends with the syllables “he-ney-yan-ga,” while “he-ya-ha-ya” is more characteristic of Plains songs. The music of each “family,” and in many cases each tribe, can often be identified on the basis of its favored nonsense vocables alone. To my knowledge, this is a situation unparalleled in any other musical region of the world.

While each North American “family” has its own idiosyncrasies, the differences appear minor compared to the many commonalities that make this region, along with Australia, among the most musically homogeneous in the world. The most prominent shared characteristics would appear to be: unison singing; relatively straightforward percussion accompaniment on drums and/or rattles, usually based on a simple one-beat pattern; a preponderance of “nonsense” vocables; wide intervals; moderately tense voices; and an idiosyncratic manner of forming melodies, where most notes are squarely on the beat and the iteration of the same pitch over different vocables is common, especially at phrase endings. 

Variants of more or less the same style can be found among many Central and South American Indian tribes as well. But such qualities tend to be rare among the groups identified above, i.e., those with the strongest trans-Pacific links – which also happen to be those bearing the “African Signature.”

While no one recording could be considered typical for all North American groups, the following example of Salish (so-called “Flathead”) performance, illustrates some of the most typical features discussed above: Audio Example 75: Powow Dance (American Indian Dances, Smithsonian Folkways.)

An excellent assortment of authentic North American Indian performances, including Navaho, Apache, Ponca, Sioux, Taos, Kiowa, etc. can be found on the CD Ceremonial & War Dances, available via Amazon.com. Brief clips from each can easily be streamed, giving a good general sense of some of the differences between each group and also the many commonalities, as enumerated above.

A Disconcerting Discontinuity

Given the many differences between the musical styles of the American north and south, the mainstream theory by which all Native Americans arrived via a northern land bridge becomes especially difficult to maintain. Before attempting to deal with this very problematic issue, I’ll  complicate it a bit more:

If the Americas had been populated directly and unproblematically via a Bering Strait land bridge in the manner usually presented, we would expect there to be a clear stylistic continuity between the music of the Paleosiberians of Siberia and the Amerindians of North America.   But in fact there is no such continuity. There are certainly resemblances. The two traditions are definitely related.   But Paleosiberian singing is usually solo, usually unaccompanied, often noticeably glottalized, whereas Amerindians often sing in unison, with little to no glottalization, and usually accompanied by various types of drums and/or rattles, while the frame drum of the Arctic Shamans appears to be the only instrument native to Paleosiberia. 

Significantly, we find only a very few instances of Paleosiberian "breathless" style² among Amerindians, with none at all in the north, where one would expect to find that highly distinctive trait quite frequently if these groups were simply displaced Paleosiberians, as implied by the dominant theory.

 

In other words, between regions once connected by a land bridge, where we would expect to find continuity, we find discontinuity; and between regions separated by the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean, where we would expect to find discontinuity, we find continuity. Such a situation would seem to demand serious reconsideration of all those theories postulating ancient trans-Pacific voyages.

Did the Earliest Americans Arrive via the Pacific Ocean?

Sorry to disappoint you, but that won’t wash either. In literally every case where archaeological research provides us with dates for possible trans-Pacific contacts, these are relatively recent. Pre-Columbian to be sure, but not really all that old, certainly not old enough to account for long-distance Paleolithic era migrations. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, or even probability, that certain artefacts, traditions, crops, animals, artistic or architectural styles, etc. may have infiltrated the New World via sporadic contacts with Polynesian voyagers, or possibly even, as Needham suggests, Chinese vessels. But there is no evidence that any of these voyages could have taken place at any time prior to roughly one or two thousand years ago, and in all likelihood much later.

There is no question that Polynesian sailors were capable of making long voyages of this kind. If they could reach Easter Island, it is often argued, then why not the western shores of South America? But Easter Island was not settled until, at the very earliest, 700 AD (Easter Island, Wikipedia). Even the westernmost reaches of Polynesia are thought to have been populated no earlier than 2,000 years ago (Polynesia, Wikipedia). Since even the most conservative estimates for the first arrival of humans in the Americas date to 10,000 years ago and more, we can’t rely on Polynesian sailing skills to account for the earliest settlement of the New World. And there is absolutely no evidence for trans-Pacific voyages prior to the advent of the Polynesians.

[Added 3-24-11: I must add that there is also no real evidence for an "African Signature" in Polynesian music, which has its own very distinctive style. While panpipes have been found at archaeological sites, they are apparently no longer being played, so it's not possible to assess performance style. There is, in any case, little to no sign of anything resembling P/B style hocket or interlock in any of the instrumental traditions, although we do find slit drums.  Polynesian vocal style can be characterized as "social unison," i.e., all singers sing in more or less the same rhythms at the same time, either in harmony or unison. The most common types of polyphony are parallel harmonies or drones. Contrapuntal interplay of the sort associated with the "African Signature" is not found. It's important to make this clear, in case anyone might want to assume that the P/B elements found in the music of certain Central and South American

groups could be due to relatively recent Polynesian influence.]

The First Wave

In a recently published paper, archaeologist/biologist Walter Neves and his associates present compelling physical evidence for an African-Melanesian-American link and at the same time offer a convincing alternative to the Trans-Pacific theory. Noting that the cranial morphology of the earliest American settlers is “distinct from that displayed by most late and modern Native Americans,” they find it closer to what “can be seen today among Africans, Australians, and Melanesians”; thus, “South America, Central America and possibly North America were populated by human groups with a more generalized cranial morphology before the arrival of the Mongoloids.” Since a more “Australo-Melanesian-like” morphology “was also present in East Asia at the end of the Pleistocene,” they go on to conclude that “transoceanic migrations are not necessary to explain our findings.”

We postulate that after reaching southeast Asia, this stem [Out-of-Africa] population gave rise to at least two different dispersions. One took a southward direction and arrived at Australia around 50 Ka. Sometime between 50 and 20 Ka a second branch dispersed towards the north, and arrived in the Americas by the end of the Pleistocene, bringing with it the same cranial morphology that characterized the first modern humans. (Neves, et al, “A new early Holocene human skeleton from Brazil: implications for the settlement of the New World.” Journal of Human Evolution Volume 48, Issue 4, April 2005, Pages 403-414

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doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.12.001)

A similar picture can be found in the genetic evidence. Already in 1995, Zago et al. (1995:4) had identified:

three predominant [Alpha]-globin gene haplotypes among Brazilian Indians [, a distribution that] has some features in common with the distributions observed in Southeast Asia, Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia.... The frequency of haplotype IIe among the Amazon Indians is the highest thus far observed in any human population. It occurs regularly in Oceanic and Southeast Asian populations but is absent in Europeans and sub-Saharan blacks.

[Additionally] all examples of haplotype IIa identified in our sample contained...a variant [which] when present is commonly associated with haplotypes IIa or IId in Southeast Asia, Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.

After considering all this evidence, along with a considerable amount of additional genetic data gleaned from the research of others, the authors conclude: “the similarities between native [South] Americans and populations from the Pacific Islands are probably the consequence of ancient common origins that predate the peopling of the Americas and Oceania” (ibid.:5).

A “Beachcomber” Legacy

Stephen Oppenheimer (2004:300-13) holds a very similar view of the earliest migration into the Americas, but takes it one step farther, to accommodate the effects of the Ice Age maximum, which produced a huge glacier ca 20,000 years ago. According to him, if North America had been initially populated prior to the Ice Age, that population would have either been wiped out or forced to move as the glacier expanded—some to refuges in the South, others back where they’d come from in the northwest where at that time there lay a large land mass relatively free of ice, in the vicinity of today’s Bering Strait, which he refers to as the “Beringian refuge.”³ Those already based in the southern part of North America could have continued south, possibly by sea, along the western coast, to Central and South America. This would have been the first “paleoindian” wave described by Neves.

The second wave of Asian immigrants proposed by Neves, those with a more “Mongoloid” morphology, would have been stalled in Beringia until the glacier receded, thus raising the possibility that the two populations may have mixed, both genetically and culturally. As the glacier receded, North America would have been repopulated by groups from both Beringia and the south, while Central and South America would, for the time being at least, have retained its original ''Australo-Melanesian-like'' first-wave population. Ultimately, the largely Mongoloid or mixed populations from the north would have migrated into Central and South America, displacing the first-wavers to marginal refuge areas in the densest jungles and highest mountains, to produce the physically and culturally diverse situation we find there today.

To summarize, the Americas may have originally been populated by at least two different groups: an offshoot of the original Out-of-Africa “beachcombers,” steadily progressing from Indonesia, up the coast of Eastern Asia to the extreme north; a now very different group from Central Asia, which had already broken off from the main line thousands of years earlier. Both might have made it across the arctic land bridge prior to the Ice Age maximum, but only certain groups might have made it far enough south to be safe from the maximum when it finally arrived.

Could these have included direct descendents of the original beachcomber group, bringing with them the canonic/echoic variant of P/B singing style and their hocketing panpipes? If so, then, as they progressed further south, they would have populated certain areas in Mexico, Central America, the Andes, and the Amazon Basin, where their descendents would be living today. According to this line of thought, we do not find panpipes, hocketing horn and trumpet ensembles or canonic/echoic singing north of Mexico because any stragglers from that group would not have survived the worst of the Ice Age.

The groups taking refuge in Beringia may have consisted of two other populations traced by Oppenheimer, whose history had taken them on a different course, through Central Asia and Siberia, where they could have lost touch with the original P/B traditions, since there is now, outside of the Inuit “Throat Singing” tradition (Nattiez 1999), little trace of P/B style singing, or panpipes, north of Mexico. Possibly due to their shared experiences in Beringia during the Ice Age, these northern groups may have developed strong musical and linguistic affinities that would have persisted after they diverged, making America north of Mexico an unusually homogeneous area in both respects.

Mapping American History

Since the history outlined above may be somewhat confusing, I’ve made an attempt to depict it in a series of three maps:

Figure 15.1 New World Migrations

The uppermost map traces, in red, the progress of Oppenheimer’s Out-of-Africa “beachcombers,” appropriately named, since, according to his model, we can trace their slow but steady progress along the coastlines of, first, the Indian Ocean and then the Pacific, all the way up from Southeast Asia to Beringia and beyond, continuing down the coast of North America. The red line makes more sense if we assume these were not only “beachcombers” with a taste for seafood, but also seafarers of sorts, whose relatively primitive vessels would have had no problem so long as they didn’t venture too far beyond sight of land. The blue arrows trace some of the later, post-bottleneck migrations discussed in Chapters Ten and Eleven. Note the two groups in Northeast Asia, poised at the doorstep of the New World. But, as the map suggests, the “beachcombers” may have already beaten them to it.

The map on the lower left highlights, in yellow, the “Beringian refuge” referred to above. Geological research suggests that it was not glaciated during this period, and would have thus been capable of sustaining human life. The large green area represents the extent of the icepack during what is known as the “Last Glacial Maximum,” thought to have lasted roughly between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago.  The blue arrows on the left represent the two waves of “post-bottleneck” migration into Beringia posited by Oppenheimer.

The two red arrows pointing northwest represent possible back migrations by “beachcomber” stragglers retreating to Beringia in the wake of the developing glacier. According to Oppenheimer, Beringia may have afforded a refuge to such groups, and other late arrivals, for thousands of years, prior to the glacier’s melting, during which time they would have had the opportunity to interact and presumably intermingle into a single “proto-Amerindian” population. Meanwhile, as indicated by the red arrows to the south, those “beachcombers” whose momentum had carried them beyond the reach of the glacier would have continued on their journey down the west coast of both continents, possibly all the way to the tip of South America.

The third map represents the repopulation of the Americas from Beringia in the wake of the now receding glacier. The red globs represent various “Beachcomber” colonies in Central and South America that would have already been in place for some time. It is, of course, these groups that would still be maintaining African traditions long lost by their distant cousins to the north.

A Mystery Solved?

The complex, but nevertheless convincing, scenario offered by Oppenheimer accounts not only for the distribution of hocketing wind ensembles and canonic/echoic singing but also the proliferation of instruments generally in Central and South America. According to this theory, the Out of Africa nomads would have maintained ancestral traditions rooted in HMC as they traveled north along the coast of East Asia, passed quickly through Beringia and made their way along the eastern Pacific coast down to Central and South America.

The paucity of instruments in the north could be explained by the effects of the Ice Age maximum, which would have covered most of North America, thus wiping out most of the groups living there and forcing the survivors back into the only relative warmth of Beringia. According to Oppenheimer, life would have been brutally difficult for those survivors, in an environment that would have offered very few materials from which to build instruments. Thus, when the descendants of these groups were finally able to move down into North America proper after the Ice Age, it makes sense that they would have lost most of their instrumental traditions.

This explanation is both a bit complicated and necessarily speculative. But what we know about the musical aspect does seem to fit. Oppenheimer’s theory, for better or worse, does offer a  meaningful explanation of how musical traditions bearing the “African Signature” could have made it all the way to Central and South America but not survived in the North.

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1. Much of the evidence, pro and con, is reviewed in the book Trans-Pacific echoes and resonances: listening once again, by Joseph Needham and Gwei-Djen Lu (World Scientific, 1985).

2. For a definition of Breathless Style, see references to haplogroup B2 in Appendix B.

3. Oppenheimer’s notion of a “Beringian refuge” is supported in a paper by geneticist Erica Tamm et al., Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders (PLoS ONE 2(9), 2007: e829. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000829), whose research “suggests that ancestors of Native Americans paused when they reached Beringia, during which time New World founder lineages differentiated from their Asian sister-clades” (p. 1).

In Memorium

Chapter Fourteen: Mysteries of Sahul

At the time of the Out-of-Africa migrations, water levels in the oceans were much lower than they are today, and as a result many of the islands of Island Southeast Asia were linked with the Malaysian mainland to form a single peninsula, called Sunda; and Australia and New Guinea were also linked to form a single continent, Sahul:

Figure 14.1 Sunda and Sahul

As you can see from the map, the low water levels meant that island hopping from Sunda to Sahul would not have been too much of a challenge -- especially since, as is now suspected, the Out of Africa migrants had already been doing much of their traveling by boat. Since some of the earliest archaeological evidence of modern human habitation comes from Australia, and since some of the arguably “oldest” populations (based on both their genetic and cultural makeup) now live in New Guinea and Australia, it stands to reason that Sahul must have been part of the Out-of-Africa migration.

But there is a problem. If Sahul were populated by Out of Africa migrants when both New Guinea and Australia were joined into a single landmass, and both regions had remained relatively isolated from then to now, as appears to be the case, we would expect the populations now living in both places to be quite similar, both morphologically and culturally. And we would assume they'd be closely related genetically as well. This, however, is not the case.

Melanesia overall, including both New Guinea and the closely related group of islands to its east, known as “Island Melanesia,” is highly differentiated culturally, whereas Australia is much more homogeneous, with almost all aborigines having distinctively “Australoid” features and sharing many traditions in common. Possibly because of the prolonged isolation of each group from its neighbors, due partly to geography, partly to endemic warfare, there are far more different languages and language families in New Guinea than anywhere else on Earth, while Australia is dominated by a single language family, called Pama-Nyungan, with all the others crowded into a relatively small area in the north, the region closest to New Guinea. The unusual distribution pattern for language families in Australia is visible in the following map (from the Wikipedia article, Indigenous Australian Languages).

Figure 14.2 Native Australian Language Families

The huge yellow region is where Pama-Nyungan languages are spoken, while the much smaller, multi-colored region to the north contains just about every other language family on the continent.

The African Signature

The musical picture for New Guinea and Island Melanesia is complex, with several different vocal styles and many different types of instruments. In several cases, we find P/B-related vocal styles, and also instances of instrumental hocket, especially with wind ensembles of pipes, panpipes, trumpets and flutes (see Chapter Nine, Audio Examples 17-22). In other cases we hear unison singing, and in still others, relatively simple part singing similar to that of Western Polynesia. The picture for Australian aboriginal music, on the other hand, is completely different, exhibiting a remarkably high degree of homogeneity and lacking any trace of an African signature.

Among the most compelling instances of the “African Signature” in New Guinea is Audio Example 17, already presented in Chapter Nine -- P/B style yodeled/interlock, as recorded by Steven Feld in the Southern Highlands of New Guinea: Audio Example 17:Bosavi Yodeling (from Bosavi: Rainforest Music of Papua New Guinea).

A somewhat different type of yodeled interlock can be heard among the Abau people of the Upper Sepik River highlands: Audio Example 53: Healing Song (from Songs & Dances from Papua New Guinea, track 5, recorded by John Thornley).

Here is an example of relatively straightforward “shouted hocket,” with yodeling, from the Huli people of the Southern Highlands: Audio Example 54:  Huli Yodeling (from Emap FM – Music from Oceania ).

A very similar type of shouted hocket can be heard in this recording of another highland group, the Dani: Audio Example 55: Dani (from Emap FM – Music from Oceania).

Among the Aka Pygmies of Africa a very similar type of hocketed interchange, called “esime,” functions as an interlude between more complex songs (Kisliuk 1998:41): Audio Example 56: Aka esime (from Musical Anthology of the Aka Pygmies, recorded by Simha Arom). Relatively simple hocketed performances of this type are classified as “haplogroup” A1 in the Phylogenetic Tree provided in Appendix B.

Highland vs. Lowland

There are two large language families in New Guinea and Island Melanesia: Austronesian and "Papuan." The former is generally regarded as much more recent than the latter, as it is associated with groups thought to have originated somewhere in southern China or Southeast Asia that expanded during the last 4,000 years or so, first to Melanesia and then to Polynesia. Most of these newer populations settled along the northern and eastern coast of New Guinea, and on many other Melanesian islands. "Papuan" is the name given to the languages of those who were presumably already living in Melanesia when the Austronesians arrived. The so-called "Papuan" languages are actually a large group of unrelated language families -- along with several languages regarded as unaffiliated "isolates" -- spoken by people living, for the most part, in the interior highlands.

Geneticists Alan J. Redd and Mark Stoneking found two mitochondrial DNA clusters among Papua New Guinea highlanders with “coalescent time estimates of ~80,000 and 122,000 years ago, suggesting ancient isolation and genetic drift.” There are indications that “84% of the sample of PNG highlander mtDNA belong to these two clusters” ("Peopling of the Sahul: mtDNA Variation in Aboriginal Australian and Papua New Guinean Populations," American Journal of Human Genetics, 65, 1999, p. 808). This is only one of several such assessments, ethnological, linguistic and genetic, that associate the ancestry of the New Guinea highlanders with the original "Out of Africa" lineage, while most Austronesian speakers of the coastal and lowland areas are considered relatively recent arrivals from the north.

To determine whether the highland-lowland dichotomy could predict the African Signature, a Cantometric search for one of the most distinctive features of P/B, vocal interlock,  was conducted for the entirety of the New Guinea sample, with the following results:

Culture Name	Language Family	Location	#
BALIEM	Papuan	Highlands of Irian Jaya -- Baliem Valley	1
BIAMI	Papuan	Southern Highlands	2
BISORIO	Papuan	Highlands -- East Sepik Province	1
DANI	Papuan	Highlands of Irian Jaya -- Baliem Valley	5
EIPO	Papuan	Highlands of Irian Jaya -- Baliem Valley	10
HAMTAI	Papuan	Highlands -- Gulf Province	1
HULI	Papuan	Southern Highlands	2
KOVAI	Papuan	Umboi Isl., Morobe Province, Northeast Coast	1
MONI	Papuan	Highlands	1
OK	Papuan	Highlands of West Papua -- near Irian Jaya	3
YALI	Papuan	Highlands of Irian Jaya -- Baliem Valley	4

Table 14.1 Vocal Interlock -- New Guinea

Of the 11 groups above that “tested positive” for interlock, all are Papuan speakers and all but one are highlanders. Since 23 groups in the entire sample are identified as highland and 22 as coastal or lowland (with an additional 13 I have not yet been able to locate accurately), there does appear to be a strong correlation between the musical evidence and the genetic/linguistic evidence, distinguishing an indigenous highland population, with roots in the early Out-of-Africa migration, from a much more recently arrived coastal/lowland population, associated with Austronesian languages and culture.

The picture for Island Melanesia, is not so simple, however, as the “lowland/highland” dichotomy is not always clear, and many native “Papuan” groups now speak Austronesian languages. Nevertheless, Island Melanesia also contains many instances of the African Signature, as evidenced by Audio Examples 18 and 22 (see Chapter Nine), and the following, truly remarkable, recording of vocal interlock, accompanied by pipes, from the island of Buka, north of Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands:  Audio Example 57: Buka Singers with Pipes (from Emap FM – Music from Oceania).

Australian Homogeneity

Melanesian music is by no means limited to P/B-related styles, and is in fact one of the more diversified musical areas on Earth. In contrast, Australia is among the most musically homogeneous regions in the world. Australian aboriginal singing is characterized by tense, nasal vocal style, either solo or unison, the frequent iteration of single notes, with sticks or boomerangs beaten together to produce relatively simple one-beat rhythms or simple variants of the one-beat pattern:

Audio Example 58: Western Australia (from Emap FM – Music from Oceania).

From the Yuendumu Community, Central Australia: Audio Example 59: Traditional Song (from Traditional Aboriginal Music:Sounds from the Bush, Arc Music, track 20).

From Northeast Australia: Audio Example 60: CapeYork (from Emap FM – Music from Oceania).

More or less the same general performance style pervades the entire continent, though occasionally one hears something more complex, with traces of polyphony. The only important musical instrument is the Didgeridoo, which was traditionally found only in the west and may be a relatively recent innovation. Drums, plentiful in Melanesia, are all but absent in Australia. The above descriptions are deceptive, however, as Australian singing and Didgeridoo playing are among the most sophisticated musical art forms in the entire world. Many of the texts that go with these songs are also remarkable examples of highly sophisticated, allusive and complex poetry.

Considering the importance of Australia as the bearer of the earliest archaeological evidence of modern humans outside of Africa, evidence which so strongly supports the Out-of-Africa model, the absence of any trace of the “African signature” in any of its indigenous music is difficult to explain. If the Out of Africa migrants were singing and playing in some version of P/B style, then what could have happened when they got to Australia that made them lose their musical traditions and develop such different ones? And since, as we’ve seen, we do in fact find many instances of the African signature in New Guinea and Island Melanesia, its absence in Australia is especially difficult to understand. Coupled with all the other evidence for major discrepancies, morphological, genetic, linguistic, etc., we are faced with an extremely perplexing mystery.

I would like to propose an explanation that might resolve all or most of the contradictions, which again, like so much else in this book, should be seen as exploratory, speculative and provisional. Let’s begin with some provocative clues:

A Divided History

It has long been thought that the Tasmanians, tragically exterminated during the initial stages of the colonial era, might have been direct descendants of an initial wave of immigration that preceded the entry of australoid peoples. This notion was revived by anthropologist Joseph Birdsell and his associate Norman Tindale, who promoted what they called a "tri-hybrid" theory of Australian history involving three successive waves of migration. According to Birdsell, the first immigrants, the "Barrineans," were Negritos, and it is their remains we see in the "gracile" Mungo Lake skeletons, the earliest (ca 45,000 ya) fossil remains in Australia. The next wave were what he called the "Murrayians," with "caucasoid" features resembling the Ainu. And the last wave were the "Carpentarians," the now dominant "australoids," with affinities to the australoids of India. Birdsell's research confirmed the almost mythic existence of Pygmies in Australia, which made it logical for him to conclude that they were most likely descended from the original "Barrineans."

Figure 14.3 Joseph Birdsell with adult Australian Pygmy

For Birdsell, the early Tasmanians, who may have had a similar morphology, judging from various remains, had also been Negritos, and therefore must also have been descended from the earliest immigrants. Birdsell's "tri-hybrid" theory has been disputed and is no longer a part of mainstream anthropology, possibly due to "political correctness" concerns, as it flew in the face of a popular movement promoting the idea that all aboriginals were descended from the original inhabitants of the continent.

Male vs. Female

An ongoing theme in the genetic story from this part of the world is a surprising male-female distinction, and Australia is no exception. The findings reported in a paper of 2003, by Max Ingman and Ulf Gyllensten, Mitochondrial Genome Variation and Evolutionary History of Australian and New Guinean Aborigines, reveal

a striking difference between the genetic history of females and the reported history of males in the Australian Aboriginal population. . . Kayser et al. (2001) proposed that the high frequency of a unique [Y chromosome] haplotype in Australia is the result of a population expansion that started from a few hundred individuals. In this case, the predominance of a unique Y-chromosome haplotype in Australia would be the result of a founder effect. However, there does not appear to be a corresponding loss of genetic diversity resulting from a bottleneck seen among mitochondrial lineages (p. 1604 -- my emphasis).

In other words, the major discrepancy between Australian Y and mtDNA diversity suggests a bottleneck in the former, yet none in the latter, which seems puzzling -- unless males and females have a very different history on this continent. (Remember, the Y chromosome is found only in males and can represent only male lineages.)

Our mitochondrial [i.e., female line] data imply that some lineages from the populations of Australia and New Guinea have shared a common history since the initial colonization of Sahul. . . . [However,] [t]he lack of a common Y-chromosome haplotype found both in Australia and in the New Guinea highlands (or in any other Melanesian population) argues against the concept that the New Guinean and Australian populations are derived from the same migration event (Kayser et al. 2001). However, the Australia-specific Y chromosome haplotype could have arisen after the colonization of Sahul and therefore is absent in other populations. (my emphasis)

Passage from India?

For many years, anthropologists have speculated regarding what appear to be striking physical similarities between Australian aboriginals and the Vedda of southern India and Sri Lanka, many of whom have a distinctly “australoid” physiognomy. While such comparisons have often been dismissed, recent findings suggest that they could have a genetic basis after all – but, interestingly enough, only on the male line.

In an article titled Gene Flow from the Indian Subcontinent to Australia: Evidence from the Y Chromosome, by Alan Redd et al., 2002, the authors present “strong evidence for an influx of Y chromosomes from the Indian subcontinent to Australia . . .”:

In sum, we found that 50% of the Y chromosomes sampled from aboriginal Australians [haplogroup C*] share common ancestry with a set of Y chromosomes that represent less than 2% of the sampled Indian subcontinent paternal gene pool. . . . (p. 676)

While only 2% of the male gene pool for India might seem insignificant, it's important to remember that the C* haplogroup is found only among certain tribal peoples in south India and Sri Lanka (where we find many australoid types today). It would be very strange indeed if the figure were much higher than 2%, since Australian aborigines bear little physical or cultural resemblance to East Indians generally. However, the figure shoots up to 50% in Australia, a remarkably strong representation. While these results are indeed suggestive, the connection may be relatively recent. According to their estimates, C* dates only to the mid-Holocene, roughly 8,000 years ago, which places this particular migration well past the Out of Africa exodus.

It would be much easier to argue for an Indian-Australian cultural connection if there were any distinctive musical similarities between Tribal India and Aboriginal Australia, but that does not seem to be the case. However, I recently came across a remarkable Youtube clip of dancing among the Chenchu hunter-gatherers of South India that strongly resembles certain types of Australian Aboriginal dance: Video Example Seven -- Children of the Forest:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQSDpRX8bZk&feature=related )

While the very opening contains some interesting moves, the most remarkable similarities with Australia can be found at the 1:30 and 2:30 marks.

Compare the above with the Australian Aboriginal dancing seen in portions of Video Example Eight: Dance During Initiation Ceremony (skip to roughly 30 seconds in):

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6hKzvdtIcg&feature=related )

A Hypothetical Reconstruction

On the basis of the analysis presented above, along with a considerable amount of additional evidence not presented here, but available via my blog, Music 000001 (see especially Posts 297-310), I’ve been able to put together an admittedly very speculative hypothesis, roughly consistent with Birdsell’s “trihybrid” theory, which could account for all or most of the odd discrepancies, morphological, genetic, linguistic and musical, between New Guinea and Island Melanesia on the one hand, and the Australian Aboriginals on the other. Here’s what I think could have happened:

1. Early entry into Sahul by island hopping from Sunda, in the immediate wake of the Out of Africa migration. The earliest immigrants would have been a small band of HMP (Hypothetical Migrant Population) descendants, who would have retained an African morphology and an African culture and value system, based largely on HMC. These early immigrants would not have been seriously affected by the population bottleneck(s) I've associated with the Toba eruption (or some equally devastating event), as they would presumably have been living far enough to the east of India at the time to be only minimally affected, and therefore would have retained their original African characteristics to at least some significant degree.

2. It seems reasonable to think in terms of a fairly rapid expansion along the coast of the entirety of Sahul, followed by a very long period of stability, in which these relatively peaceful and cooperative hunter-gatherer descendants of HBP and HMP could have lived together in harmony for literally tens of thousands of years.

3. On the basis of the genetic evidence for both a highly contrastive history for males and females in Australia and a close Y chromosome association between Indian and Australian australoid populations, we can posit a second migration, occurring many thousands of years later, of mostly male australoid hunter-gatherers, whose ancestry would have stemmed from the South Asian centered bottleneck posited in Chapter Ten. According to Redd et al (2002),

The divergence times reported here correspond with a series of changes in the Australian anthropological record between 5,000 years ago and 3,000 years ago, including the introduction of the dingo; the spread of the Australian Small Tool tradition; the appearance of plant-processing technologies, especially complex detoxification of cycads; and the expansion of the Pama-Nyungan language over seven-eighths of Australia. Although there is no consensus among anthropologists, the former three changes may have links to India, perhaps the most relevant of which is the introduction of the dingo, whose ocean transit was almost certainly on board a boat. In addition, Dixon noted some similarities between Dravidian languages of southern India and Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia.

4. We can now extrapolate backward to speculate on how the arrival of these strangers could have led to the conditions we now see. And the first thing to consider is the fact that, in order to produce the largely australoid population we see in Australia today, the more recent immigrants would have to have mated with the “native” women, probably forcibly at first, and at the same time largely either killed, displaced or enslaved the native men, wherever they encountered them. This would explain the “different histories” of males and females we see in the genetic evidence. The mtDNA (female line) picture would not reflect the presence of men from a completely different population, but the Y chromosome evidence would -- and that does seem to be the case. Over time, as the more aggressive and belligerent newcomers expanded throughout the continent, the original inhabitants would have done what so many relatively non-aggressive, non-competitive, non-violent peoples have done throughout history -- retired to easily defended or undesirable refuge areas. This would explain the special status of Tasmania, which could have served as a last stand for some of the natives as they retreated southeast to the point farthest away from the most likely point where the newcomers would have arrived, the northwest. And since Tasmania was originally a kind of peninsula with a fairly narrow land bridge, that might have worked for them as a last line of defense until the sea level rose and they became completely isolated.

5. Since Australia is relatively flat and easily traversed, the indigenous males would not have had much chance of survival, but could have been hunted down and slaughtered or enslaved, and their women appropriated as wives. Northeast Queensland contains a tropical forest, which was until recently, according to Birdsell's research, the home of a few small groups of Pygmies, who may have originally retreated to this area as a refuge, possibly many thousands of years ago. But the most obvious refuge area would have been to the north, in what is now New Guinea, and it is the highlands of New Guinea that we can posit as the most likely refuge area for the majority of the retreating natives. If the newcomers had arrived while New Guinea was still attached to Australia, the refugees could have made their way north by land, but if the sea had already separated the two regions, they could have retreated in boats or rafts, at least while the distance was not too great. The australoid invaders would have followed them, and at that time taken over the New Guinea coast, while the natives retreated into the highlands.

6. The next important event in the history of this region is the advent of the so-called “Austronesians,” who are thought to have migrated to various points in New Guinea and Island Melanesia anywhere from 6,000 to roughly 4,000 years ago. The newly arrived Austronesians appear to have displaced most of the australoids along the coastal regions to the north and east. Their only recourse would have been a retreat into the highlands, which would therefore have come to harbor a mixed population, partly of “negrito” and partly of australoid origin. Since these groups would have formerly been bitter enemies, it's not difficult to see how the endemic warfare we now see in the New Guinea highlands could have originated at this point, although many of these populations seem ultimately to have merged, both physically and culturally.

If my scenario is correct, then the current situation in the former Sahul could be described in the following terms:

1. in Australia, the descendants of males from the second wave of migration and females from the first, with australoid morphology, speaking, for the most part, a Pama-Nyungan language; 2. in New Guinea, descendants of the original “negrito” settlers, with a degree of australoid intermixture, now surviving mostly in the highlands, but also along portions of the coast, living as foragers and part-time horticulturalists, speaking a wide variety of very different “Papuan” languages, and retaining at least some of their original African traditions, including, in some cases, P/B-related musical styles; 3. in New Guinea, descendants of population 1, formerly based on the New Guinea coast, now living for the most part in the highlands as forager/horticulturalists, possibly intermixed with population 2, both biologically and culturally -- also speaking “Papuan” or in some cases Austronesian languages; 4. relatively recent Austronesian immigrants, speaking Austronesian languages, and inhabiting, for the most part, the northern and eastern coastal and lowland areas of New Guinea.