Leenia wrote: "I've read about a cave in Africa (occupied by hominids) which had funny smooth places on the cave formations. When struck with bone, these places emitted musical sounds. Too bad I can't remember the age of occupation. I guess we just have to say it was the music of cavemen."

:::Whistles::: The acoustics must have been fabulous!

My personal theory (or rather hunch, as I have absolutely no evidence for it) is that singing is a natural extention of speach. After all, spoken language has rhythm, and the tone and pith of our voices change with our emotions. All it takes to get a song from speach is to 'magnify' those qualities.

And then, there are forms like yodelling and hollaring -- comunicating over long distances when visual communication is impossible (such as in the jungle or the mountain). Wasn't there a bit in Mel Brooks' "Oldest Man" routine about the first songs being invented because of danger -- that a sung note carries further than a spoken word:

"Oh, Help! Oh, He-e-e-lp! A Saber Tooth tiger is a-a-after me!!!"

There may be some truth to that...