#51: Oldest Musical Instrument Found | Prehistoric Culture | DISCOVER Magazine.
“More than 35,000 years ago, human ancestors living in present-day southwestern Germany were playing sophisticated music, according to University of Tübingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard. In June he announced that he and his colleagues had unearthed an ancient bone flute in Hohle Fels, a cave in the Swabian mountains. The sound produced by the flute “is almost identical to tones of the major scale played on today’s flute,” says Nikolaj Tarasov, a recorder specialist at the Music University of Karlsruhe in Germany. The five-holed instrument—carved from the bone of a griffon vulture—might be capable of expressing greater harmonic variety than the modern-day flute, he says.”
