The oldest known musical instrument is a 40,000-year-old bird-bone flute
Ice Age humans carved a flute from a vulture's wing bone — and we can still tell which notes it played.
In 2008, archaeologists led by Nicholas Conard of the University of Tubingen pieced together 12 fragments of a flute from the Hohle Fels cave in southwestern Germany. Carved from the naturally hollow wing bone of a griffon vulture, it has five finger holes and a carefully cut V-shaped mouthpiece.
It is roughly 40,000 years old, dating to the Aurignacian period — the time of the first modern humans in Europe. The Tubingen team calls it “the best preserved” flute of its age, and the find is among the oldest known musical instruments anywhere.
The discovery pushed the roots of music deep into prehistory. Researchers argue that singing, dancing, and flute-playing may have helped early Homo sapiens build larger social networks — perhaps one advantage they held over the Neanderthals they replaced. Music, in other words, may be nearly as old as our species itself.
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