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Sounds of the Ancient Past
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Extremely interesting Charlie.
I wanna hear “The Wheels on the Chariot Go Round and Round”. :laugh: You will now have that tune in your head for the next three days. :whistle:
The New York Times article on bone flutes in Europe (Germany) hotlinked from the dailygrail site is a little presumptuous and the revised dating relates to bones found in the same caves – not the flutes themselves. But whatever the age of the items, they are remarkable.
These are the oldest confirmed musical instruments so far (unless you count drums and rattles and such). The Hohle Fels Flute (previously believed to be about 35,000 years old) is made from the radius bone of a griffon vulture. I have a recollection that the hole spacings were established to correspond approximately to a diatonic scale (ie the “do-re-mi” intervals with no sharps or flats, like the white keys on a piano).
Of the three flutes from the Geissenklösterle cave (previously believed to be around 30,000 years old), two of them were made from swan bones and one from mammoth ivory. The latter had to be reconstructed from fragments but it was a masterpiece of craftsmanship. Bird bones are hollow and easy to convert, but the mammoth ivory had to be carefully split, hollowed out and then glued and bound to create a tube with airtight seams.
It has three finger holes but would still have been capable of producing relatively complex melodies. Using a replica made in wood, it has been established that it doesn’t have a diatonic scale. It seems to correspond to a pentatonic scale which (although widely used around the world), predominates in Asia. It’s also the scale widely used for “da blooz”.
"Woke up this mornin', dem mammoths done gone…?" B)
These instruments date to a time when Neanderthals and the first modern humans simultaneously occupied Europe and cannot be reliably attributed to one or the other, given that these sites show signs of multiple occupations.
There is a claim for an older instrument – the so-called Divje Babe “flute” made from a cave bear femur and found in 1995 near Cerkno in northwestern Slovenia. Although it’s proudly on display in their national museum with accompanying information claiming it has been “reliably proven” to be Neanderthal and associated with a 55,000 year old culture, that isn’t what the evidence says. Carbon dating put it around 43,000 years old and it’s more probably associated with Cro-Mangon humans of the Aurignacian culture. There is no consensus that it’s even a flute at all, despite one unverified claim that it plays a diatonic scale. Here it is:
I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.
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