Stone Age flutes found in Germany (UPDATE)

[Adsos Letter]

SOURCE: Science News

The hills may be alive with the sound of music, but so were vulture bones and mammoth tusks for ancient Europeans. Researchers working at two Stone Age German sites have unearthed a nearly complete flute made from a vulture’s forearm as well as sections of three mammoth-ivory flutes.

These 35,000- to 40,000-year-old finds are the oldest known musical instruments in the world, says archaeologist and project director Nicholas Conard of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Bone flutes previously unearthed at Stone Age sites occupied by humans in France and Austria date to between 19,000 and 30,000 years ago. And many researchers now consider the spaced holes in a controversial 43,000-year-old find, dubbed a Neandertal bone flute in 1995, as the products of chewing by cave bears.

The bone flute, which excavators found in 12 pieces, and the ivory flutes were discovered in the summer of 2008 at Hohle Fels cave. The team reports in an upcoming Nature that the finds are from the time of the Aurignacian culture, when modern humans first migrated to Europe from Africa. Scientists estimate that the culture existed from about 40,000 to 29,000 years ago.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/44941/title/Stone_Age_flutes_found_in_Germany

Some nice photos at the site PLUS a link to a recording of music played on such an instrument.

[Hekate]

1. KnR. I read the article in the LA Times & wondered if they'd tried blowing through them. Cool!

[opihimoimoi]

2. The score found near them flutes had notes sim to ITS A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL

LOL

[Adsos Letter]

3. Thanks for the earworm!

:scared:

[dgibby]

8. How about "We Are the World"?

Kinda completes the circle of life, don't you think?

[opihimoimoi]

13. Here is one of my current worms...I got 3 of them...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOIjd0fBPX0

[myrna minx]

5. Gah! Why?Why? Why? The earworm--it burns! n/t

:rofl:

[aquart]

4. PBS was showing the bone flutes the other night. And playing them.

Haunting.

[Fumesucker]

6. That reminds me of this story, which centers around a stone age pipe..

And the piper..

http://www.nicholaswhyte.info/sf/gdd.htm

The story won both a Nebula in 1980 and a Hugo in 1981.

[dgibby]

10. "Grotto of the Dancing Deer"

What a visual image that evokes. A real wordsmith.

[Fumesucker]

12. Yes, he was..

Some authors are splashy and showy, others evoke powerful imagery with a few words, Simak was one of the latter.

[armyowalgreens]

7. Impossible. The universe is only 6000 years old...

:evilgrin:

[dgibby]

9. Music

The language of the universe. Thanks so much for sharing with us. I love that you included the audio. Great stuff! If I had it to do over, I'd spend my life going from dig to dig. Oh, well, maybe next time....

[dalaigh lllama]

11. Sounds contemporary. Music really is the universal language

Not sure how much variation is possible in producing the tones, but the spacing of the notes sounds just as we'd hear them today in a major pentatonic scale. Wonder if any musicologists have gotten to play with these yet. This is so cool!