What Was the First Musical Instrument?
Although some radio stations boast of their repertoire of “oldies,” we know that label is a bit of a misnomer. After all, songs from the 1950s are hardly old when compared to the sheer length of time that humans have been creating music.
Given the importance of this form of expression, it’s unsurprising that ancient cultures around the world created their own distinct instruments for making music. Some of these, including a 4,000-year-old Mesopotamian lyre and a 3,000-year-old Egyptian harp, are still in existence today. Others, such as the 2,000-year-old Roman water organ, are known only through documentation.
But even these standouts from antiquity represent relatively advanced examples of musical instruments. Prehistoric humans certainly sought to soothe and entertain themselves and their companions by way of music from simpler generators. So what form did these simpler instruments take? And can we definitively identify the first one known to humanity?
Voice and Makeshift Instruments
If we consider voice a musical instrument, then this is undoubtedly the answer. Although it’s unknown when early humans first discovered their capacity for singing, they would have possessed the physical ability to do so as far back as 530,000 years ago.
If our definition of a musical instrument is an object that is deliberately used to create sounds, then it’s also worth noting that hominids realized they could rhythmically whack a stick against a tree or clap two rocks together at an indeterminate juncture of the distant past.
It would seem logical, then, for the earliest known instruments to be those of the percussion variety, which create sounds by the act of banging or shaking them. In fact, a remarkable “orchestra” of these instruments, consisting of mammoth bones and ivory rattles, was found at a 20,000-year-old Paleolithic settlement in modern-day Ukraine.
But neither these nor any other prehistoric percussion tool can be considered the world’s oldest musical instrument. The honor instead belongs to flutes that are at least twice as old, although the age and instrumental status of at least one of the candidates is up for debate.
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A Neanderthal Flute May Be 60,000 Years Old
In 1995, an archaeological team discovered an unusual object in the cave of Divje Babe, located around 755 feet above the Idrijca River in Western Slovenia. This object was a 4.5-inch bone that featured two perfectly preserved holes and two partial holes lined up on one side, along with what appeared to be a sharpened rim on one end.
The bone was revealed to be the femur of a juvenile cave bear. Analysis of the archaeological layer where both the bone and stone tools were found yielded an age of around 50,000 to 60,000 years old. Because Homo sapiens didn't arrive in Europe until around 40,000 years ago, these objects were attributed to the Neanderthals.
Researchers were intrigued by what they determined to be symmetrical, human-made holes on the bone. Through careful replication of the item, musicologists discovered that the pitches created by blowing into the bone and varying finger placement on the holes matched the notes of the standard diatonic scale. The result was a playable instrument that created what certainly sounds like music to modern ears.
Beyond holding a claim as the oldest known instrument, the Divje Babe flute presented a new dilemma for sociologists to consider: If Neanderthals were capable of designing instruments to express themselves through music, they were perhaps far more intelligent than initially believed.
Critics Dispute the Age and Origins of the Neanderthal Flute
Despite the flute's well-publicized place on the National Museum of Slovenia's website, some archaeologists aren’t buying its designation as a landmark discovery.
In a 2015 paper, paleoecologist Cajus G. Diedrich of the Paleo-Logic Independent Institute of Geosciences detailed his examinations of the Neanderthal flute and what he found to be a lack of any telltale signs of human-instigated puncturing. He suggested that the shape and positioning of holes were indicative of the bite marks of an Ice Age spotted hyena instead.
While one might point to the playability of the flute as proof that it was fashioned as an instrument, the paper cast doubt on the reliability of the techniques that determined its age. Even the museum describes the treasured object as "about 20,000 years older than other known flutes," providing additional fodder for critics who are skeptical of this outlier of such extraordinary age.
Musical Discoveries in Germany Are More Reliably Dated
If the Divje Babe bone is no more than a hyena chew toy, then other Paleolithic flutes present sturdier evidence of being the oldest surviving musical instruments.
During the first decade of the 2000s, a series of excavations in caves in southwestern Germany uncovered a variety of flutes made from bird bones and mammoth ivory by some of the earliest humans in the area. Although the artifacts were originally believed to be in the neighborhood of 35,000 years old, improved radiocarbon dating technology has pushed the ages of the flutes from one site to between 42,000 and 43,000 years old.
Overall, this discovery is more consistent with the long-held view that Homo sapiens were able to eclipse the Neanderthals through their capacity for innovation. Additionally, researchers cited the radiocarbon dating results as evidence that our prehistoric ancestors appeared in the Upper Danube region earlier than originally thought, before a cold climactic phase settled in the area approximately 40,000 years ago.
Perhaps this ability to make music is something to be celebrated as distinctly human. And as modern musicians keep pushing the envelope with their original compositions and means for conveying them, we may be fortunate enough to learn more about humanity’s musical origins as even older instruments are discovered.
