Earliest musical instruments: Ice Age bone flutes
- Date
- c. 43,000–40,000 years ago
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- Central Europe (Germany, Swabian Jura)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
From the caves of the Swabian Jura in southwestern Germany came the oldest securely dated musical instruments yet found: flutes made from bird bone and mammoth ivory.
The most complete, recovered from Hohle Fels, was fashioned from the hollow wing bone of a griffon vulture, about 22 cm long with five finger holes and a carefully cut V-shaped mouthpiece. Flutes from the nearby Geissenklösterle cave have been radiocarbon-dated to roughly 42,000-43,000 years ago, making them slightly older. The precision of the holes and the difficulty of carving a flute from a split mammoth tusk show deliberate, skilled instrument-making and imply that organised music was part of early Upper Paleolithic life in Europe. Music may have strengthened social bonds and group identity, and its appearance alongside figurative art and personal ornaments points to a flourishing of symbolic culture among the first modern humans to settle the European continent.
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Further reading
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