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35,000-Year-Old Flute Is Oldest Music Instrument Ever Found
Omomyid writes "The AFP is reporting the discovery of a 35,000 year-old flute, made from a vulture wing bone. The context described makes it sound like a musician's shop. There were also fragments of ivory-based flutes and flint tools. Being at least 35KYO this bone flute beats the previous oldest-known musical instrument by at least 5,000 years and puts it very close to the beginning of the Aurignacian culture."
That flute is -29,000 years old!
This one time, 35,000 years ago at band camp...
I bet people have been playing the skin flute for far longer
It makes a person wonder just how long ago music was enjoyed (besides whistling or singing) or did we just grunt our way around?
The more I learn about the subject, the more convinced I am that the ancients were not the unsophisticated primitives that we often imagine them to be.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It is the oldest for the Homo sapiens, but there were flutes found on Neanderthal sites, much older flutes.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/376813/neanderthal_flute_the_oldest_musical.html
Or that we are not the sophisticated advanced species we often imagine us to be?
And if you filmed the discovery of this flute and play it backwards, you see a team of scientist burying a flute for 35,000 years only to have it discovered by some primitive human, who then picks it up and starts playing it....
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
But what's really interesting about this flute is that the harmonics are very close to a modern-day flute - 35,000 years later! There is a sample of the recreated sound right now on the New York Times website (permalink)...
Pity TFA lacks more detail about the tonality. It would be interesting to know what notes it could produce, and what intervals, possibly indicating whether they leaned to minor or major scale for example..
Fail.
Pelvis was obliterated due to snu-snu.
to date my bone flute.
*giggity*
How did they know it was a flute? There were carvings on the wall from people whining they could ahve done it better/
How did they get two flutes in tune? they bashed the skull in of one of the bone flautists.
Why did the neanderthal go extinct? to get away from the flute recital.
How many bone Flautists did it taker to start a fire? 2 one to do it and another to push them into the fire.
What do you call a flute that's been buried for 35000 years? A good start.
2 flutists ride a mammoth over a cliff, what's the tragedy? you can fit 4 flutists on a mammoth.
I can go on, but unlike a flautists I know when to stop.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think you miss the point. The old flute sounds close to modern flutes. When you consider the broad range of instruments and musical scales (think "non-western") in the world, having prehistoric and modern instruments whose notes are "quite harmonic" falls somewhere between interesting and amazing.
When you say "... most people find pleasant...", you are right on the edge of a rather profound idea. The laws of physics haven't changed, but people certainly have. Does this mean that what they found pleasant and what we find pleasant are similar? Does that mean that musical perception is largely unchanged in the last 35 millenia?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
For awhile now I've been wondering about the connection between music and religion. For several thousand years, the most common place to hear a serious musical performance was at a religious ceremony. (Unless you were nobility)
A pipe organ in a cathedral is a staggeringly amazing experience even for those of us able to find and listen to recordings ahead of time. Imagine the reaction of the poor common folk who had nothing but a reed flute and some singing in a grass hut to prepare them for it.
As much as video killed the radio star, I wonder how much recorded music killed religion. (See the Taliban, who ban it, for instance.)
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Disclaimer - IAPOM. I am a professional orchestral musician.
"Harmonics" doesn't really mean anything in this sense. Flutes don't play two notes simultaneously, so there is no harmony. This flute is capable of playing at least 5 distinct pitches, or at least 10 if you count overblowing to get a higher octave. The notes in the example are Eb, F, G, Bb, and C, which is a pentatonic scale.
This is the most amazing thing to me. The pentatonic scale's pitches have the simple frequency ratios of 1:9/8:5/4:3/2:5/3. Instruments designed to play this scale have been found almost everywhere humans play music. The person that made this instrument perceived, through sound, these simple mathematical ratios. 35,000 years ago, humans had already discovered the beauty in mathematics.
Also, I can draw the conclusion that the person that made this flute had made flutes previously, or learned from someone who did. The chances of gouging holes in a bone at random and having a very accurate pentatonic scale along with a serviceable embouchure hole in the end product is vanishingly small. This skill is learned by trial and error or instruction. This opens up more questions. If the maker of this flute didn't invent the pentatonic scale, who did? How old is the scale?