By Victor Epand

Music tames the savage beast(*) they say, and perhaps the creation of music in our species tamed us into a more, but not totally, civilized manner. The origin of music is not known exactly, it has its origins before pre-history, through humans using patterns, repetition and tonality to produce naturally occurring sounds, possibly as a way to lure animals into a hunt.

Essentially, the first musical instrument was the human voice because it can produce a wide range of sounds from singing and humming to whistling and clicking. If the hyoid bone, which is responsible for speech, is the judge of the earliest music, then it would date to 60,000 years old at least, beating the oldest bone flute by 10,000 years.

Clapping was probably the first type of instrument used, through hitting one’s hands together, or using stones to create rhythm. When humans first began using stone tools, the sound of pounding seed and roots into meal was probably the first type of rhythm ever created by early humans.

The ‘Neanderthal flute’, which is a disputed find, dates to 43,000 years old. It is a hollowed out femur of a cave bear, containing holes like a flute. The earliest confirmed bone pipe dates to 36,000 years ago.

The harp, a complicated musical device, dates to 5,000 years ago based on statues found in Crete, as well as the double flute. In regards to song, this dates to 3,400 years ago, written in Hurrian, consisting of two melodic lines that utilizes major and minor thirds, while some interpretations of the music states it is monophonic.The Delphic Hymn is the earliest surviving example of notated music in the world.

Clearly, as can be seen from the archeological evidence, music is something that has evolved with our species over the past 60,000 years or so. It has been a companion for all of us, from the lonely hunter waiting for his prey while he hunts an animal, to large groups of people whose prayers become a form of song to their gods.

It is something which sets our species apart from others on this planet, and while birds have their song, humans have one completely different, that is varied and complex. Music is part of our lifeblood and what gives hope to our species as we venture into the unknown of the future. A world without music is a world where the vestiges of civilized humanity disappear.

Music and instruments have progressed over time. With the invention of a twelve tone scale, western music has become the prominent music form. With the creation of the twelve tone scale, new instruments were created. These instruments were able to play these scales and even more important, were able to play with one another. This lead to the creation of ensembles and written music. The next greatest invention , the printing press, allowed music to be shared worldwide.

Today, we still use the basic instruments such as the harp and flute, except that the are tunable and can play a wider range of notes and music. Music continues to tame the savage breast even today.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Victor_Epand

June 24, 2009 — A bird-bone flute unearthed in a German cave was carved some 35,000 years ago and is the oldest handcrafted musical instrument yet discovered, archaeologists say, offering the latest evidence that early modern humans in Europe had established a complex and creative culture.

A team led by University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard assembled the flute from 12 pieces of griffon vulture bone scattered in a small plot of the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany.

Together, the pieces comprise a 8.6-inch (22-centimeter) instrument with five holes and a notched end. Conard said the flute was 35,000 years old.

“It’s unambiguously the oldest instrument in the world,” Conard told the Associated Press this week. His findings were published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Other archaeologists agreed with Conard’s assessment.

April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada, said the flute predates previously discovered instruments “but the dates are not so much older that it’s surprising or controversial.” Nowell was not involved in Conard’s research.

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Another flute excavated in Austria is believed to be 19,000 years old, and a group of 22 flutes found in the French Pyrenees mountains has been dated at up to 30,000 years ago.

Conard’s team excavated the flute in September 2008, the same month they recovered six ivory fragments from the Hohle Fels cave that form a female figurine they believe is the oldest known sculpture of the human form.

Together, the flute and the figure — found in the same layer of sediment — suggest that modern humans had established an advanced culture in Europe 35,000 years ago, said Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who didn’t participate in Conard’s study.

Roebroeks said it’s difficult to say how cognitively and socially advanced these people were. But the physical trappings of their lives — including musical instruments, personal decorations and figurative art — match the objects we associate with modern human behavior, Roebroeks said.

“It shows that from the moment that modern humans enter Europe … it is as modern in terms of material culture as it can get,” Roebroeks told the AP. He agreed with Conard’s assertion that the flute appears to be the earliest known musical instrument in the world.

Neanderthals also lived in Europe around the time the flute and sculpture were made, and frequented the Hohle Fels cave. Both Conard and Roebroeks believe, however, that layered deposits left by both species over thousands of years suggest the artifacts were crafted by early modern humans.

“The material record is so completely different from what happened in these hundreds of thousands of years before with the Neanderthals,” Roebroeks said. “I would put my money on modern humans having created and played these flutes.”

In 1995, archaeologist Ivan Turk excavated a bear bone artifact from a cave in Slovenia, known as the Divje Babe flute, that he has dated at around 43,000 years ago and suggested was made by Neanderthals.

But other archaeologists, including Nowell, have challenged that theory, suggesting instead that the twin holes on the 4.3-inch-long (11-centimeter-long) bone were made by a carnivore’s bite.

Turk did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Nowell said other researchers have hypothesized that early humans may have used spear points as wind chimes and that markings on some cave stalactites suggest they were used as percussive instruments. But there is no proof, she said, and the Hohle Fels flute is much more credible because it’s the oldest specimen from an established style of bone and ivory flutes in Europe.

“There’s a distinction between sporadic appearances and the true development of, in this case, a musical culture,” Nowell said. “The importance of something like this flute is it shows a well-established technique and tradition.”

Conard said it’s likely that early modern humans — and perhaps Neanderthals, too — were making music longer than 35,000 years ago. But he added the Hohle Fels flute and the others found across Europe strengthen evidence that modern humans in Europe were establishing cultural behavior similar to our own.

SOURCE:  http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/24/prehistoric-flute.html

Excavations in the summer of 2008 at the sites of Hohle Fels and Vogelherd produced the new evidence. The most significant of these finds, a nearly complete bone flute, was recovered in the basal Aurignacian deposits at Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley, 20 km west of Ulm. The flute was found in 12 pieces. The fragments were distributed over a vertical distance of 3 cm over a horizontal area of about 10 x 20 cm. This flute is by far the most complete of all of the musical instruments thus far recovered from the caves of Swabia.

“These finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe, more than 35,000 calendar years ago,” the authors write in the journal Nature. “Other than the caves of the Swabian Jura, the earliest secure archaeological evidence for music comes from sites in France and Austria and post-date 30,000 years ago.”

The preserved portion of the bone flute from Hohle Fels has a length of 21.8 cm and a diameter of about 8 mm. The flute preserves five finger holes. The surfaces of the flute and the structure of the bone are in excellent condition and reveal many details about the manufacture of the flute. The maker carved two deep, V-shaped notches into one end of the instrument, presumably to form the proximal end of the flute into which the musician blew. The find density in this stratum is moderately high with much flint knapping debris, worked bone and ivory, bones of horse, reindeer, mammoth, cave bear, ibex, as well as burnt bone. No diagnostic human bones have been found in deposits of the Swabian Aurignacian, but we assume that modern humans produced the artifacts from the basal Aurignacian deposits shortly after their arrival in the region following a migration up the Danube Corridor.  Follow the link below to read more.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090624213346.htm#