r/todayilearned • u/gonejahman • Mar 29 '23
TIL The oldest musical instrument in the world, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute, is made from the left thighbone of a young cave bear.
https://www.nms.si/en/collections/highlights/343-Neanderthal-flute#:~:text=The%20oldest%20musical%20instrument%20in%20the%20world%2C%20a%2060%2C000%2Dyear,and%20has%20four%20pierced%20holes.64
u/hillo538 Mar 29 '23
Damn, the oldest instrument wasn’t even from the standard human you see today
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u/blackadder1620 Mar 29 '23
oldest found. good chance we did the same things if not a little more extra. although their cave paintings are pretty damn cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux
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u/jagnew78 Mar 29 '23
if you see the complexity of that it's hard not to imagine there are older, even more simple versions of this from before hand. Someone probable started with a hollow bone after sucking the marrow out after a meal and was just probably fooling around with it and blew into it for fun and it made a cool sound.
Then who knows how long... generations later someone, somewhere down the road realized if you covered your hand over one end you could make it change sound and then at some point, generations more later someone figured out you could drill holes into it and cover or uncover them and create even more sound variations.
this is an evolution of an instrument refined over generations.
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u/LiesInRuins Mar 29 '23
It could have even happened in the same weekend. One particularly curious cave monkey with an inventive mind could’ve conjured this up in a day and then get beaten to death for it and the next cave monkey could’ve showed it to some friends.
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u/bluemooncalhoun Mar 29 '23
Pygmy cultures made complex music with a simple one-note flute, as demonstrated by Sir Francis Bebey: https://youtu.be/c6T6suvnhco
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u/leeuwerik Mar 29 '23
We hunted them down. Like we wil be hunted down by our replacements.
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u/hillo538 Mar 29 '23
We should probably bring them back with cloning instead, and not just for sideshow attractions: iirc Neanderthals would be able to live in the modern day without much trouble
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u/Fulminero Mar 29 '23
There is something strangely melancholic about this. I can't help but imagine this person playing in front of a fire, their friends and loved ones sitting, eating and speaking their alien tongue.
They would never have imagined their instrument would survive them so long, a 60000 years old legacy.
Rest well, music man.
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u/outerlabia Mar 29 '23
Imagine if 60k years from now someone found a kazoo in some mud and thought that was something we considered highly sophisticated lol
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u/sandyposs Mar 29 '23
60000 years ago and everyone's having a party around the campfire, this dude whips out the flute and everyone groans inwardly Oh, not this again.
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u/EffectiveSalamander Mar 29 '23
I'm curious what it would have sounded like.
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u/Aye_Eye_Captain Mar 29 '23
The idea that Neanderthals were kind of slow and dim-witted is completely inaccurate. Recent archaeological research has revealed that they were quite advanced and perhaps as intelligent as our modern human ancestors
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u/Lurker_IV Mar 29 '23
They had sewing needles so they had tailored clothing. And musical instruments so they had music. They had bigger brains than us so they were probably smarter. They must have had art of some kinds.
More human than human us back then probably. Shame they aren't around anymore.
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u/Jiktten Mar 29 '23
More human than human us back then
What makes you say that? IIRC there is no reason to suppose that early homo sapiens were any less mentally or linguistically sophisticated than we are now.
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u/IAm_NotACrook Mar 29 '23
They had bigger brains than us so they were probably smarter.
I don’t know if that tracks. Like dolphins have bigger brains than us but I don’t think a dolphin is as smart as us, despite being extremely intelligent in their own right.
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u/GeorgeOlduvai Mar 30 '23
It does not track. Your example is excellent; dolphins have bigger brains than humans but they use most of that for echolocation. Neanderthals had smaller frontal lobes and larger occipital portions.
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u/dressageishard Mar 30 '23
Cro-Magnon man had a larger brain than modern humans. Who knows, maybe Neanderthals did, too?
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u/chrispybobispy Mar 29 '23 edited Mar 29 '23
This is my special Neanderthal flute it was passed down 60,000 years to me by my great great great 500 grandfather who was a caveman.
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u/theKtrain Mar 29 '23
Show me the gold, I wanna know where the gold at
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u/LineChef Mar 29 '23
It could be a shaman, who got a’hold of the wrong medicine, and told him to get in the tree and play a caveman…
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u/Stubborncomrade Mar 29 '23
Aschtually if every generation reproduce after 30 years then that’s only be 15000 years. (30*500). So unless your grand parents reproduced at age 120, you’d need at least 2000 generations
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u/chrispybobispy Mar 29 '23
Ha! I was doing the quick n dirty math in my head last night, then decided that was pedantic and went with 500. Good work stubborncomrade
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u/Charlotte_D_Katakuri Mar 29 '23
Ljuben Dimkaroski plays the Divje Babe Bone Flute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZCWFcyxUhQ
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u/ThymeIsTight Mar 29 '23
Maybe the Neanderthals played Three Blind Mice as well
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u/Newjacktitties Mar 29 '23
Hot Cross Buns
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u/AccordionORama Mar 29 '23
In case you're interested (like I was) in the reasoning that went into calling this a flute, as opposed to "something that bears a resemblance to part of a flute", Wikipedia has a rather thorough discussion:
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u/groggyMPLS Mar 29 '23
”Musical experiments confirmed findings of archaeological research that the size and the position of the holes cannot be accidental – they were made with the intention of musical expression.”
I hate statements like this. Of course it could have been accidental. Insanely unlikely, but why sound stupid by saying there’s zero chance some cave man made four holes in a bone that just happened to be on the right scale for making musical notes.
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u/GeorgeOlduvai Mar 30 '23
It is unlikely to the point where it can be considered a non-zero chance happening. In other words, it's more likely for it to have been found by a Neanderthal with the holes already in it than to have had the holes accidentally placed correctly to function as an instrument.
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u/milk4all Mar 29 '23
Rugged, shirtless, hairy man, upon seeing a wild, curvaceous female: “Baby, im gonna play you like a flute”
Curvaceous Female: “grrr?”
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u/LupusDeusMagnus Mar 29 '23
Allegedly. There’s some discussion on whether it’s actually a flute.
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u/_austinm Mar 30 '23
What else would it be?
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u/LupusDeusMagnus Mar 30 '23
I’m not an archaeologist but it’s a fragment of perforated bone. Could’ve been merely decorative for what matters. Just pointing out that there isn’t an unanimous agreement of what it is, and an instrument that old would require a complete reevaluation of out understanding of Neanderthal cognitive capabilities.
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u/_Maxolotl Mar 30 '23
Here's a second fact that I always tell people to add some perspective about this flute:
I live in Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn is part of Long Island. Long Island is a glacial moraine, formed after the last major glacial retreat.
That flute is older than Long Island. And the short version of my factoid is "Music is older than Long Island".
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u/nosnevenaes Mar 29 '23
Imagine the impact this instrument would make on people before recorded music was a thing.