You care about music, right? Well, you’ll care about this. And thus I justify a somewhat off-topic post, but this is too cool not to write about.
Archaeologists have dug up a 35,000-year-old flute that is believed to be the oldest musical instrument yet found. Unearthed in a cave in Germany, the five-holed flute was made from the radius bone of a griffon vulture.
In an article on the website of National Geographic, the head archaeologist on the study discusses what the instrument might tell us about music’s role in the evolution of Stone Age society:
“Think how important music is for us,” Conard said. “Whether it’s at church, a party, or just for fun, you can see how powerful music can be. People often hear a song and cry, or feel great joy or sorrow. All of those kinds of emotions help bond people together.”
Music may therefore have been important to maintaining and strengthening Stone Age social networks among modern humans, allowing for greater societal organization and strategizing, said Conard, whose study appears today on the Web site of the journal Nature.
Full article. NPR’s website has an audio clip of a replica of the flute being played.
I can only hope that as we learn more about these ancient instruments, someone takes the initiative to create a period ensemble devoted to performing music of the Stone Age. Sure, it might require more than a few flights of fancy — okay, unbridled imagination — to arrive at a score or even a guiding improvisational ethic. But think of the experience of seeing such a thing.
Not only that, but other experts have theorized that prehistoric artists may have painted their works in cave chambers with acoustically resonant qualities. These revival concerts could be housed in similarly designed spaces, merging dance, music and visual art as these early musicians might have done.
I’m only half joking. I’m excited by the potential to reimagine and reinvent the contexts in which we experience music, wherever we might look for inspiration. That’s part of what got me so intrigued about WGBH’s Second Life experiment.
I wonder whether any extant cultures make music in ways that may be close to the methods of these Stone Age cultures. Or have the world’s people progressed too far musically to offer any clues that point so far into the past?
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It’s such a cool story. It reminds me of an interview I did with a physician/flute player. He told me he played on a lot of bone flutes, and he had a friend who made flutes out of all kinds of bones, including human ones. My friend went to a party once and a woman showed up who had had a leg removed surgically. It was awkward because one of the bone flutes he had played was made out of her leg bone.
True story.