Earliest music instruments found (BBC)
Researchers have identified what they say are the oldest-known musical instruments in the world.
The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, come from a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans - Homo sapiens.
Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old.
The findings are described in the Journal of Human Evolution.
A team led by Prof Tom Higham at Oxford University dated animal bones in the same ground layers as the flutes at Geissenkloesterle Cave in Germany's Swabian Jura.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18196349
Hmmmm ... how many holes can a whistle have before it becomes a "flute" ?
= new reply since forum marked as read
But the evidence is pushing music back further and further into the past.
It used to be thought that the Greeks invented the seven-tone scale. Then Egyptian instruments were recreated and shown to play the same major and minor scales we use today. Now, amazingly enough, what appear to be flutes have been found among Neanderthal remains:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe_flute
