Video: Cave music recreates ancient acoustics
What did Palaeolithic pop sound like? Ask the team recreating long-forgotten instruments and the soundscapes they were played in
BONE flutes are the oldest musical instruments discovered so far. The remains of several have been found in European caves also containing Palaeolithic paintings. They date from between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago, a time of enormous creativity, when humans first started to make art and when ritual burials suggest the beginnings of religion or spirituality. As the first hard evidence of human musicality they are fascinating. However, interpreting them has often proved contentious.
Take one of the oldest, the Divje Babe flute. It was found in what is now Slovenia among the remains of Neanderthals, and some believe it was made and used by them. If Neanderthals were musical, they were more similar to us than we might imagine, but that’s not the only controversy surrounding this find. Some argue the flute is simply a chewed animal bone – that the holes were made by a bear or other carnivore gnawing on it.
There is another way of looking at it, though; regardless of who or what created this artefact, it may still have been used as a flute. One way to find out would be to recreate it and then try to play it. This is the starting point for archaeoacoustics. The discipline began around 40 years ago with the idea of making replicas of ancient musical instruments. Today, developments in technology mean that we can also digitally reconstruct the visual and sonic environments in which these instruments were played. That’s what …
