[4][5][6], The artifact known as the Divje Babe flute, discovered in Slovenia in 1995, has been claimed as the oldest flute, though this has been disputed. During regular archaeological excavations several flutes, that date to the European Upper Paleolithic have been discovered in caves in the Swabian Alb region of Germany. Dr. Conard’s team said an abundance of stone and ivory artifacts, flint-knapping debris and bones of hunted animals had been found in the sediments with the flutes. A replica has yet to be made of the recent discovery, but the archaeologists said they expected the five-hole flute with its larger diameter to “provide a comparable, or perhaps greater, range of notes and musical possibilities.”, This week, Dr. Conard began a new season of exploration at Hohle Fels Cave. The most significant of the new artifacts, the archaeologists said, was a flute made from a hollow bone from a griffon vulture; griffon skeletons are often found in these caves. They said the bone flute with five finger holes, found at Hohle Fels Cave in the hills west of Ulm, was “by far the most complete of the musical instruments so far recovered from the caves” in a region where pieces of other flutes have been turning up in recent years. The German archaeologists suggested that music in the Stone Age “could have contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks, and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans.”. This bird-bone flute unearthed in the Hohle Fels cave was carved some 35,000 years ago and is the oldest handcrafted musical instrument yet discovered, archaeologists say (2). mod. Three sites—Hohle Fels, Vogelherd, and Geißenklösterle—have produced flute fragments, all dated between about 30,000-40,000 years ago. It is a wooden one-piece flute that is two feet long. Our last musicalinstrument dates back to over forty thousand years, and is the Hohle FelsFlute. Archaeologists Wednesday reported the discovery last fall of a bone flute and two fragments of ivory flutes that they said represented the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture. That discovery was announced in May by Dr. Conard. Archaeologists saythat this flute confirms the theory that there was already an establishedmusical culture before settlers came to Europe. The Hohle Fels is a cave in the Swabian Alps that has yielded a number of important archaeological finds dating to the Upper Paleolithic age. The other end appears to have been broken off; judging by the typical length of these bird bones, two or three inches are missing. “The tones are quite harmonic,” he said. Lion-man. Breath, the typical means of sound production in wind instruments, is completely absent in Hohle Fels. 100% (1/1) Löwenmensch figurine Lion Man Löwenmensch. Composition for 2 flutes and 2 clarinets by Lee Weisert. The team that made the Hohle Fels discovery wrote that these finds were, at the time, the earliest evidence of humans being engaged in musical culture. The preserved portion is about 8.5 inches long and includes the end of the instrument into which the musician blew. In 2008 in a cave in Germany the ‘ Hohle Fels Flute’ was discovered made from a vulture’s wing bone with five holes and it dated back more than 40,000 years old. “We’ll see how it goes,” he said by e-mail. Twelve pieces were found in the lowest layer of the so-called Aurignacian – the oldest culture relating to modern man in Europe. Experts say, besides serving recreation and religious purposes, ritual music might have helped to maintain larger social networks, a competitive advantage over the Neanderthals. The surfaces of the flute … The flute preserves five finger holes. The Flute of Hohle fels: The discovery of a bone flute and two fragments of ivory flutes are said to represent the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture. The Renaissance flutes. SOUND SPACE - THE FLUTES FROM GEISSENKLÖSTERLE AND HOHLE FELS The earliest evidence of musical instruments is about 40,000 years old. "Hohler Fels" is also the name of another cave situated near Happurg, Bavaria. The bone flute was found in the same cave of “Hohle Fels” as the Venus figurine, near Schelklingen, some 20km from Ulm. Its discoverer suggested the holes were man made and that there may have been four originally before the item was damaged. The maker carved two deep, V-shaped notches there, and four fine lines near the finger holes. Conard made headlines in May when he reported discovering a voluptuous female figurine carved from mammoth ivory (ScienceNOW, 13 May 2009) in … Dated and tested independently by two laboratories, in England and Germany, the artifacts are authentic products of the Homo sapiens Aurignacian archaeological culture, made in between 43,000 and 35,000 years ago. Music and sculpture as artistic expression have developed simultaneously among the first humans in Europe, as the region is considered a key area in which various cultural innovations have developed. During the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, woolly mammoths provided shelter in … Hohle Fels: Bone Flutes, Venus figurines, carved ivory. Three sites-Hohle Fels, Vogelherd, and Geißenklösterle-have produced flute fragments, … The cavern is already well known as a site for signs of early human efforts; in May, members of the same team unveiled a Hohle Fels find that could be the world's oldest Venus figure. Scientists say that this bone flute, found at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, is at least 35,000 years old. Prehistorian historian Nicholas Conard presents the bone flute from Hohle Fels to journalists on June 24, 2009 in the southern German city of … Bone flute from Hohle Fels archaeological horizon Vb The maker of the flute carved the instrument from the radius of a griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus). It was found 20 metres from the cave wall, next to an ivory flute similar to the one found at Geißenklösterle. It opens slowly with Venus: bass flute, and capturing the mood of someone advancing into the unknown, the music of a 50s sci-fi movie in deep space before it goes all dramatic; the Venus of Hohle Fels, dated to about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, is the earliest undisputed example of expressly human figurative art. They suggested music may have helped to maintain bonds between larger groups of humans, and that this may have helped the species to expand both in numbers and in geographical range. Many people appeared to have lived and worked there soon after their arrival in Europe, assumed to be around 40,000 years ago and 10,000 years before the native Neanderthals became extinct. The preserved portion of the bone flute from Hohle Fels has a length of 21.8 cm and a diameter of about 8 mm. A replica of the H… From radiocarbon dating of this and other artifacts, it has long been thought that the flute was the earliest form of musical instrument created by our distant ancestors. They were excavated in the caves of the Ach and Lone valley on the southern rim of the Swabian Alb. [7] However, other scientists have argued that the holes were chewed by an animal. One never finds what one is looking for, but one normally finds something interesting.”. [8][9][10], "A Middle Palaeolithic origin of music? Although radiocarbon dates earlier than 30,000 years ago can be imprecise, samples from the bones and associated material were tested independently by two laboratories, in England and Germany, using different methods. The flutes, made of bone and ivory, represent the earliest known musical instruments and provide unmistakable evidence of Hohle Fels Flutes. Friedrich Seeberger, a German specialist in ancient music, reproduced the ivory flute in wood. In the same cave the oldest figurine of Venus was found, dating back 35,000 to 40,000 years. This species has a wing span of between 230 and 265 cm and provides bones ideal for large flutes. YOU KNOW: that the world’s oldest musical instrument, a flute made from bones, was found in 2008 at Hohle Fels, a Stone Age cave in southern Germany? A flute from Hohle Fels created from the wing bone of a Griffon vulture >35,000 years ago. The artifact is a cave bear femur, 43100 ± 700 years old, that has been pierced with spaced holes. The larger diameter of the bone flute from Hohle Fels would have made its tone deeper than that of the bone flute from Geißenklo¨sterle, and closer to that documented experimentally from a reconstruction of the ivory flute from archae-ological horizonII at Geißenklo¨sterle15. Dated and tested independently by two laboratories, in England and Germany, the artifacts are authentic products of the Homo sapiens Aurignacian archaeological culture, made in between 43,000 and 35,000 years ago. Posted by. The Swabian Jura is an area in Germany where ivory figurines and debris from their production have been identified in numbers from the Upper Paleolithic levels. A three-hole flute carved from mammoth ivory was uncovered a few years ago at another cave, as well as two flutes made from the wing bones of a mute swan. … The earliest solid evidence of musical instruments previously came from France and Austria, but dated much more recently than 30,000 years ago. This flute was discovered in 2008 in the Hohle Fels Cave inGermany and is made from Griffon Vulture bone. Dr. Conard, a professor of archaeology, said in an e-mail message from Germany that “the new flutes must be very close to 40,000 calendar years old and certainly date to the initial settlement of the region.”. The flutes were found in the Caves with the oldest Ice Age art, where also the oldest known examples of figurative art were discovered. This is a flute from the Middle Ages. During regular archaeological excavations several flutes, that date to the European Upper Paleolithic have been discovered in caves in the Swabian Alb region of Germany. Was this evidence of happy hours after the hunt? The cave is about 7 m above today's flood plain of the Ach. Using cave-bear bone accumulations to assess the Divje Babe I bone 'flute, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paleolithic_flutes&oldid=999689724, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 35.000 Jahre alte Flöten gefunden (in German), swr.de, Retrieved on June 29, 2009, This page was last edited on 11 January 2021, at 12:55. And all the wind instruments in the world, from recorders to flageolets, owe it to little works of wonder like the Hohle Fels flute. But until now the artifacts appeared to be too rare and were not dated precisely enough to support wider interpretations of the early rise of music. Experimenting with the replica, he found that the ancient flute produced a range of notes comparable in many ways to modern flutes. Wind instrument - Wind instrument - Flutes: Flutes were ubiquitous in antiquity. It is in the key of D, meaning that in order to tune the instrument properly the player must play the key of D. As one can clearly tell, the Hohle Fels flute and this flute are much different in appearance. [2] Several years before, two flutes made of mute swan bone and one made of woolly mammoth ivory were found in the nearby Geissenklösterle cave. The Hohle Fels flute was found next to the Venus of Hohle Fels and a short distance from the oldest known human carving. They are flutes made of bird bone and mammoth ivory. It the oldest flute thatresembles a modern day flute, being roughly eight and a half inches long andhas an aperture similar to contemporary flute’s to blow into. The instrument, made of a vulture bone and having five finger holes, is thought to be at least 33,000 years old. The Neanderthals, close human relatives, apparently left no firm evidence of having been musical. The team from Tubingen University have published details of three flutes found in the Hohle Fels cavern in southwest Germany. The oldest yet of a series of similar flutes found in the region, the Hohle Fels flute sheds new light on the lives and cultural innovations of early humans. Dr. Conard’s discovery in 2004 of the seven-inch three-hole ivory flute at the Geissenklösterle cave, also near Ulm, inspired him to widen his search of caves, saying at the time that southern Germany “may have been one of the places where human culture originated.”. The preserved portion of flute 1 from Hohle Fels has a length of 21.8 cm and a diameter of about 8mm. Now, this ancient flute was found very close to another famous artifact Conard recently unearthed from these caves: a carved figure of a female with exaggerated sexual characteristics — … It was discovered in 2008 in a cave near Schelklingen called Hohle Fels, ‘hollow rock’ in German. The 2008 excavations at Hohle Fels also recovered two small frag- Here’s the raw material for the world’s oldest flute - the wing bones of the Griffon vulture [2048x1412] Close. Archived. Nicholas J. Conard of the University of Tübingen, in Germany, showed a thin bird-bone flute carved some 35,000 years ago. Archaeologists and other scholars can only speculate as to what moved these early Europeans to make music. H. Jensen/University of Tübingen … 6 8 7 1 1786. “I never have expectations. The Hohle Fels (German pronunciation: [ˈhoːləˈfɛls]) (also Hohlefels, Hohler Fels, German for "hollow rock") is a cave in the Swabian Jura of Germany that has yielded a number of important archaeological finds dating from the Upper Paleolithic. Scientists say that this bone flute, found at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, is at least 35,000 years old. Construction Material. The small sculpture was carved from mammoth ivory and depicts a woman. What is thought to be the earliest example of a Western flute was discovered in 2008 at Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, Germany. [3] In 2012, a fresh high-resolution carbon dating examination revealed an age of 42,000 to 43,000 years for the flutes from the Geissenklösterle cave, suggesting that they rather than the one from the Hohle Fels cave could be the oldest known musical instruments. Artifacts found in the cave represent some of the earliest examples of prehistoric art and musical instruments ever discovered. The preserved portion of the bone flute from Hohle Fels has a length of 21.8 cm and a diameter of about 8 mm. It is of special importance for prehistoric research due to its Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic layers. Hohle Fels is a cave site that was formed in the White Jurassic Period and is located in the Ach valley near Schelklingen. 2 years ago. The performers create the sounds by striking the holes and keys of the instruments with their fingers. Ancient flutes are not something new. Fertility rites or social bonding? It is by far the most complete instrument that has been discovered up to this point in the caves of Swabia. In the same cave, archaeologists also found beautiful carvings of animals. In an article published online by the journal Nature, Nicholas J. Conard of the University of Tübingen, in Germany, and colleagues wrote, “These finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe.”. It so happens that the Hohle Fels flute was uncovered in sediments a few feet away from the carved figurine of a busty, nude woman, also around 35,000 years old, noted Dr. Conard and his co-authors, Susanne C. Münzel of Tübingen and Maria Malina of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The flute is made from a vulture radius bone perforated with five finger holes, and dates to approximately 35,000 years ago. In early depictions, they are sometimes confused with reedpipes. [1][2], In 2006, the Hohle Fels Flute was discovered in the Hohle Fels cave in Germany's Swabian Alb. Scientists said the data agreed on ages of at least 35,000 years. Hohle Fels Flutes The Swabian Jura is an area in Germany where ivory figurines and debris from their production have been identified in numbers from the Upper Paleolithic levels. Music and sculpture expressions of artistic creativity, it seems were emerging in tandem among some of the first modern humans when they began spreading through Europe or soon thereafter. Ancient music Music Music archaeology Paleolithic flutes Archaeoacoustics. The flute preserves five finger holes. At least 35,000 years ago, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were also carving the oldest known examples of figurative art in the world. 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