Neanderthal flute (2024)

FAQs

Did Neanderthals have flutes? ›

The oldest musical instrument in the world, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute is a treasure of global significance. It was discovered in Divje babe cave near Cerkno and has been declared by experts to have been made by Neanderthals. It is made from the left thighbone of a young cave bear and has four pierced holes.

Mammoth bone and swan bone flutes have been found dating back to 30,000 to 37,000 years old in the Swabian Alps of Germany. The flutes were made in the Upper Paleolithic age, and are more commonly accepted as being the oldest known musical instruments.

It has been suggested that it was made by Neanderthals as a form of musical instrument, and became known as the Neanderthal flute. The artifact is on prominent public display in the National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana as a Neanderthal flute. As such, it would be the world's oldest known musical instrument.

The first string instrument is thought to be the ravanastron. The ravanastron was made from a gourd and had a long neck with two strings that were played with a bow. The oldest string instrument was found in Sri Lanka and dates back to 2500 B.C., but the ravanastron is actually still played today.

There are numerous depictions of flutes in visual art throughout Mesopotamian history, including a woman playing a flute on a Sumerian shell ornament from Nippur dating to 2600–2500 BCE, a flautist on an Akkadian cylinder seal dating to 2400–2200 BCE, an ivory box from Nimrud dating to 900–700 BCE, and in a bas relief ...

Neanderthals were skilled tool makers, as evidenced by excavated objects such as spears and flint handaxes. Around 300,000 years ago Neanderthals developed an innovative stone technology known as the Levallois technique.

Theobald Boehm (1794-1881) was a German inventor and musician best known for developing the modern flute and improved fingering system, known as the “Boehm system.” Boehm patented his new fingering system in 1847. Our collection database is a work in progress.

Improved radiocarbon dating published in 2015 indicates that Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago, which overturns older carbon dating which indicated that Neanderthals may have lived as recently as 24,000 years ago, including in refugia on the south coast of the Iberian peninsula such as Gorham's Cave.

“Most paleoanthropologists accept that the Divje Babe 'flute' is a carnivore-chewed bone, but you do see it referred to as a flute from time to time,” says April Nowell, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada.

What kind of flute did Jethro Tull play? ›

THE FLUTES

For a while I switched to 600 series flutes by Pearl, a Japanese company, and then more recently in the early nineties to Sankyo Silversonics and the US-made 2100 and 3100 Powell flutes. I use the Powells for recording and take a Sankyo and a Powell on tour.

The piccolo is renowned for its capabilities in the highest register. Like an excited younger sibling, the piccolo likes to imitate its older flute brother or sister in the way it looks and acts, but with more energy and a much more piercing voice.

“As far as we now know, Neanderthals were the first among the closest human relatives that made musical instruments. “The flute from Divje babe testifies to the fact that Neanderthals were capable of such an abstract and uniquely human activity as creating music.”

Neanderthals created tools for domestic uses that are distinct from hunting tools. Tools included scrapers for tanning hides, awls for punching holes in hides to make loose-fitting clothes, and burins for cutting into wood and bone.

A flute dating back to approximately 900 B.C. was found in China and called a ch'ie. To date, the oldest flutes have been found in the Swabian Alps region of Germany, and are said to have been from about 43,000 to 35,000 years ago.

The cornu and other instruments such as the tuba were used to give signals in the ancient Roman military. There were collegia dedicated to musicians. One collegium made up of flute and lyre players was attested for the first time in the second century CE.

They could produce the sounds of human speech and had a hearing range necessary to process human speech. “Neandertals could have produced all the sounds in that frequency range, like we can,” co-author Rolf M. Quam, associate professor at Binghamton University in New York, told 'CNN'.