I don't even wanna ASK about the origin of the modern fibreglass sousaphone...the elephant wrote:And now it's time for "Ask Dr. Stupid," with your host … Dr. Stupid.
Bob in Chicago writes:
Dr. Stupid, when did F tubas come to America?
Dr. Stupid replies:
Well, Bob …
The first F tubas made their way to the New world via the Bering Land Bridge during the last Ice Age.
As tribes of Asian hunter-gatherers made their way south via a gap between two large glacial shelves they brought the very early tubas with them. These have been dated through the use of several methods (chiefly Carbon-14 dating in the earliest sample groups) to a period approximately 10,800 BCE.
It is believed that these early tubas were indeed pitched in F, but were completely wild. The domesticated F tuba only came about with the rise of agriculture, paralleling the development of maize. Obvious genetic crossbreeding between the quite ancient wild F tuba and the much more "contemporary" (1,200 BCE) feral Giant York variety led to progressively larger and more costly variants. It is unknown what, if anything, happened to the various likely mutations that were less successful than the modern, domesticated F tuba. These might have died off through the process of Natural Selection (see Bevan, et al, 2nd edition, pps. 11 - 23 and p. 127) or could have possibly continued to mutate into other forms extant today, yet largely unrecognized.
Suspected mutations could include a wide array of seemingly unrelated domesticated instruments, to include the Chevy Prism, Pace Picante Sauce and Christina Aguilera.
The modern, domesticated F tuba doubtless has a far more relaxed and gentle low register than its wild cousin from the Ice Age. However, contemporary F tubas evolving from similar roots that led through Germanic areas of Western Europe (specifically tuba remains discovered in the Neander Valley in the early 1960s) are more crude and generally of a smaller physical size than those descended from the genetic sub groups in the Americas. (There are three of these, displaying strong evidence that F tubas may have arrived in three separate migratory waves.) It is believed that the Germanic "Neandertuben" were ungainly, slow to respond, with genetically flawed lower registers and intonation. While contemporary descendants of the Germanic F tuba genetic sub groups are much more robust in both intonation and low register tone, they still suffer from the genetics passed down to them from so long ago.
F tubas in the Americas developed along different lines and had differing tones and response from the older, Germanic genetic groups. The most massive mutation was when the feral F tubas evolved into Eb tubas. For this we must plumb the depths of speculation and surmise as we have no physical link between the two to prove a relationship existed. Plenty of evidence exists, but it is still all circumstantial. Therefore we have a missing link in the development of the indigenous, feral F tuba in the western hemisphere.
Eventually, the domesticated American F tuba died off, being replaced by ill-fated Eb school tubas, Germanic F variants with graduated bores, and a sub-species descended from the same roots but having been cultivated and domesticated in Asia.
Or they could have come over during the potato famine with all those Irish guys.
Your Buddy,
Dr. Stupid
And now, back to our program …
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Furthermore, what's with the frickin' tiny blue letters? My eyes are bad enough as it is!
Yer killin' me... Go back to your pickin' and grinnin', willya?