Oldest musical instrument of mankind found in Germany
25 June 2009, 18:18 category: Net Finds
Coming across an interesting read on Munich-based sueddeutsche.de (in german language) this morning, I thought I'd share the news with you.
Archeologists around Prof. Nicholas Conard at the University of Tübingen have found what is supposedly the oldest man-made musical instrument on earth. Examinations reveal that the flute made of vulture's wing bone has its origins in a period of early civilization in Europe, named the Aurignacian. This period dates back 40,000 to 35,000 years BC.
The flute, along with more fragments of other flutes made from mammoth ivory and a Venus statue, was found in the Hohle Fels ("hollow rock") cave on the Swabian Alb, just around 100 kilometres from Stuttgart in southwestern Germany, where I spent most of my youth.
While sueddeutsche.de offers just one picture of said instrument, BBC news also have a sound example of the reconstructed flute. Apparently, the flute plays tones that are within the Pentatonic scale - a scale that's being found in traditional japanese and chinese music for instance, often referred to as "natural scale", too.
"Music could have contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks, and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans relative to a culturally more conservative and demographically more isolated Neanderthal populations," the scientists say.
But we all knew about the social powers of music already, didn't we?
Archeologists around Prof. Nicholas Conard at the University of Tübingen have found what is supposedly the oldest man-made musical instrument on earth. Examinations reveal that the flute made of vulture's wing bone has its origins in a period of early civilization in Europe, named the Aurignacian. This period dates back 40,000 to 35,000 years BC.
The flute, along with more fragments of other flutes made from mammoth ivory and a Venus statue, was found in the Hohle Fels ("hollow rock") cave on the Swabian Alb, just around 100 kilometres from Stuttgart in southwestern Germany, where I spent most of my youth.
While sueddeutsche.de offers just one picture of said instrument, BBC news also have a sound example of the reconstructed flute. Apparently, the flute plays tones that are within the Pentatonic scale - a scale that's being found in traditional japanese and chinese music for instance, often referred to as "natural scale", too.
"Music could have contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks, and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans relative to a culturally more conservative and demographically more isolated Neanderthal populations," the scientists say.
But we all knew about the social powers of music already, didn't we?