Flutes go back forty-thousand years?

Washington Scientists claim to have found evidence that suggest early humans, nearly 40,000 years ago,  might have invented the flute and played it frequently.

While studying an ancient modern human settlement called Geissenklosterle in southern Germany, a team of researchers stumbled upon bone flutes which they believe date back to more than 35,000 years.

“These results are consistent with a hypothesis we made several years ago that the Danube River was a key corridor for the movement of humans and technological innovations into central Europe between 40,000 and 45,000 years ago,” study researcher Nick Conard, of Tübingen University, was quoted as saying by LiveScience.

“Geissenklosterle is one of several caves in the region that has produced important examples of personal ornaments, figurative art, mythical imagery and musical instruments. The new dates prove the great antiquity of the Aurignacian in Swabia.” The Aurignacian refers to an ancient culture and the associated tools.

The flutes are the earliest record of technological and artistic innovations that are characteristic of that period. This culture also created the oldest known art meant to represent a person, found in the same cave system in 2008.

The researchers, who detailed their work in the journal Human Evolution, radiocarbon-dated bones found in the same layer of the archaeological dig as the flutes, and found the objects were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old, belonging to the Aurignacian culture dating from the upper Paleolithic period.

So far, these dates are the earliest for the Aurignacian and predate equivalent sites from Italy, France, England and other regions.

The results indicate that modern humans entered the Upper Danube region before an extremely cold climatic phase around 39,000 to 40,000 years ago, the researchers said.

“Modern humans during the Aurignacian period were in central Europe at least 2,000 to 3,000 years before this climatic deterioration, when huge icebergs calved from ice sheets in the northern Atlantic and temperatures plummeted,” study researcher Tom Higham, of Oxford University, said in a statement. “The question is what effect this downturn might have had on the people in Europe at the time.”

This site was inhabited by modern humans, the researchers said, but it’s possible that Neanderthals were also in the area at the same time, though they haven’t been able find evidence of any cultural contact or interbreeding between the two groups in this part of Europe.

PTI