[Amazing] Earliest music instruments found - Over 42,000 years old

[OddTrader]

[Amazing] Earliest music instruments found - Over 42,000 years old

25 May 2012

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-18196349

Researchers have identified what they say are the oldest-known musical instruments in the world.

The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, come from a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans - Homo sapiens.

Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old.

The findings are described in the Journal of Human Evolution .

A team led by Prof Tom Higham at Oxford University dated animal bones in the same ground layers as the flutes at Geissenkloesterle Cave in Germany's Swabian Jura.

Prof Nick Conard, the Tuebingen University researcher who identified the previous record-holder for oldest instrument in 2009 , was excavator at the site.

He said: "These results are consistent with a hypothesis we made several years ago that the Danube River was a key corridor for the movement of humans and technological innovations into central Europe between 40,000-45,000 years ago.

 

[OddTrader]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_music

Explanations of the origin of music depend on how music is defined. If we assume that music is a form of intentional emotional manipulation, music as we know it was not possible until the onset of intentionality - the ability to reflect about the past and the future. Between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago humans started creating art in the form of paintings on cave walls, jewelry and so on (the "cultural explosion"). They also started to bury their dead ceremonially. If we assume that these new forms of behavior reflect the emergence of intentionality, then music as we know it must also have emerged during that period.

The Divje Babe Flute, a bone flute which is over 41,000 years old.

Aurignacian flute made from a vulture bone, Geissenklösterle (Swabia), which is about 35,000 years old.

 

[mlawson71]

The basic human need for self-expression through art - be it visual, written or auditory - is an incredible thing.