Music a Power Even in the Stone Age
Excerpted from New York Time Science:
Nicholas J. Conard of the University of Tübingen, in Germany, shows a thin bird-bone flute carved some 35,000 years ago.
It has long been believed that the flute is the oldest musical instrument, after the drum. And now it seems that archaeologists have discovered a bone flute that represents the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture.
This flute with five finger holes, found in the hills west of Ulm is “by far the most complete of the musical instruments so far recovered from the caves” in a region where pieces of other flutes have been turning up in recent years.
Yes, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were also carving the oldest known examples of figurative art in the world. Music and sculpture — expressions of artistic creativity, it seems — were emerging in tandem among some of the first modern humans when they began spreading through Europe or soon thereafter.
It has long been believed that the flute is the oldest musical instrument, after the drum. And now it seems that archaeologists have discovered a bone flute that represents the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture.
This flute with five finger holes, found in the hills west of Ulm is “by far the most complete of the musical instruments so far recovered from the caves” in a region where pieces of other flutes have been turning up in recent years.
Yes, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were also carving the oldest known examples of figurative art in the world. Music and sculpture — expressions of artistic creativity, it seems — were emerging in tandem among some of the first modern humans when they began spreading through Europe or soon thereafter.
It so happens that this flute was uncovered near a carved figurine of a busty, nude female. Sooo ... was this evidence of happy hours after the hunt?
Fertility rites? Social bonding? Today we can only speculate. But our earliest ancestors did indeed make music, and it may have sounded something like this:
Played: 11 | Download | Duration: 00:00:56
Read the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/science/25flute.html?_r=1&hp
Positively,
Carolan
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