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Music Art Technology & other stories
Posted on 2009 by MG
The oldest instrument
What you see is the oldest musical instrument ever discovered. It's a flute measuring about 20 cm. It was carved from the wing bone of a vulture and dates back to about 35,000 years ago.
A team of researchers from the University of Tübingen discovered three of them while excavating the Hohle Fels caves in southwestern Germany. This find brings the number of musical instruments that have survived from this remote era to eight, four of which were made from mammoth ivory and the same number from bird bone.
On this page you can also listen to them (the page still exists, but the audio file does not).
The surprising thing is that the tuning is a fairly precise pentatonic scale. Of course, we don't know how these instruments were played 35,000 years ago. It's hard to imagine that melodies like those in the example were performed, but apparently, the notes were already those.
Another question is the function of music at that time.
According to Professor Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University, the playing of music was common as far back as 40,000 years ago when modern humans spread across Europe.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that music was part of day-to-day life,” he said.
“Music was used in many kinds of social contexts: possibly religious, possibly recreational – much like we use music today in many kinds of settings.”
“The modern humans that came into our area already had a whole range of symbolic artifacts, figurative art, depictions of mythological creatures, many kinds of personal ornaments and also a well-developed musical tradition.”
Qui trovate l’articolo di BBCNews.