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The Oldest Musical Instrument: A Neanderthal Flute
Timeline of human evolution (continued):
- 44,000 years ago: Oldest known well-documented musical instrument, a flute made of bone. This means it’s likely people commonly made flutes from other materials such as hollowed-out plant stems. (Cultures already had highly developed visual art by this time.)
The fossil record shows Homo neanderthalensis probably made this flute—not Homo sapiens. As a musical instrument, the Neanderthal bone flute is sophisticated and not obvious. (Other inventions that seem simple and obvious, such as the wheel, only arose in the past few thousand years.)
The Neanderthal bone flute has four holes spaced such that the sound corresponds to whole and half-steps of the diatonic scale.
Percussion instruments likely predated melodic instruments by hundreds of thousands of years. Human vocal music certainly predated music played on percussion instruments.
- 32,000 years ago: Symbolic markings on bone, clay, stones, and ornaments reveal that elementary literacy is well in place by this time.