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Ancient Instruments and the Neanderthal Divje Babe Flute
How Did Music Begin?
The Beginning of Music
Our ability to make music is distinctively human. We have found artifacts related to music that date back thousands of years. Let’s learn about the Neanderthal Divje Babe Flute!
The Neanderthal Flute (Divje Babe Flute)
The oldest known musical instrument is a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute. The flute was discovered in Divje Babe cave near Cerkno, Slovenia, and is made out of the bone of a bear with four pierced holes to make the pitches.
Early Notation
Notation is a way to communicate musical information visually. Modern-day notation shows the tempo (speed of the song), dynamic (loudness/softness of the song), rhythm (duration of notes), and pitches (the frequency of each sound), and may even have other performance instructions. Basically, notation is a visual map of the music. The earliest known musical notation is written on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet. It gives instructions and tuning for a hymn that honored the ruler Lipit-Ishtar.
