A team of German and Turkish researchers have discovered that an ancient whistling language, native to the mountains of north-east Turkey, uses both sides of the brain - challenging the idea that communication relies heavily on the left side.

Neuroscientist Dr Onur Güntürkün, of Germany's Ruhr University Bochum, tested 31 fluent Turkish whistlers and found that when syllables were whistled, the split between right and left dominance was almost even.

As a result, researchers have now shown that understanding the ancient whistling language relies on the brain's right hemisphere - already known to be important for understanding music.

"In all languages, tonal or atonal, click or sign language, written or spoken, it's so far been the left hemisphere that appears to do most of the interpretation," Dr Güntürkün is quoted as saying in New Scientist .

“Now, we've shown for the first time equal contributions from both hemispheres."

Whistling Turkish is currently still used by about 10,000 people in northeast Turkey and the noises can travel up to five kilometres.

The results of Dr Güntürkün's study supports a 2005 study by Spain's Universidad de La Laguna that used MRI scans to show Canary Islands shepherds used both brain hemispheres to interpret a form of Spanish which is whistled.

"It's consistent with the idea that the form of a language can influence the brain networks that are recruited to process it," Professor Sophie Scott of University College London said.

Sadly, Whistling Turkish is dying out as a result of mobile phones.

"You can gossip with a mobile phone, but you can't do that with whistling because the whole valley hears," Dr Güntürkün said.