The 60,000-year-old artefact rewriting Neanderthal history - BBC REEL 

In my opinion getting to play any kind of note on a 60,000-year-old bone from an extinct animal, made by an extinct human species beats playing on an authentic Stradivarius any day of the week.

The more we learn about Neanderthals, the more the image of them as mindless brutes slips away. This flute isn't the work of happenstance. It's most likely the result of much trial and error. Someone wanted to make music and they figured out how to make it happen exactly as they imagined it. It's the work of a beautiful mind.

Our ancestors were truly more advanced than most people realize

In case you arewondering, what she's playing in 5:10 is Albinoni's: Adagio in G minor.

The range of that flute is astonishing! But what really gets me is that they were capable of making a flute that seems to be more or less in tune in some kind of a scale made of semitones and whole tones, like the scales we use today. It would be very interesting to know what scale it plays diatonically - with holes fully covered one by one. That should provide a window into the tonality of Neanderthal music, which is an absolutely mindblowing possibility.

As a Neanderthal, I'm very proud that my ancestors inspired those other - crazy - monkeys with some culture.

“It’s possible that the instrument didn’t produce more than a single whistle.” *Meanwhile, women plays a whole tune with it in the background*

Flutes could also be used to signal to one another while scavenging or hunting. Lets villagers walk far away without getting lost, use signal whistles to warn of danger or friends, or signal directions to the hunt.

A signal whistle don't need more than one hole. It definitely a music instrument.

I just listened to a classical piece of music played on an instrument designed by a Neanderthal. Mind blown.

"Some argue that Neanderthals weren't capable of such sophisticated expression." One of my background cultures is highlighted by museums built on the premise that many artists don't understand the value of their own artistic works, or even realize that they have created art at all. These opinions reveal an enormous amount about the speaker and nothing at all about the artists. Nice flute.

Why wouldn't they make music? If they could talk, they could sing. Storytellers have always looked for ways to tell stories and that's how balladry formed. This flute is so beautiful. I am so glad the neanderthal made use of it. I hope we will discover more of the primitive flutes and perhaps we will know if we are looking at the first Recorder.

As a flute player, this is extremely exciting to know that Neanderthals created the first flute, that is in tune. Of course they had many ways to create a drumbeat. Well, most of us carry their DNA….People love music, it is in our DNA…

Given the nutritional value of bone marrow, one can imagine making a hole while trying to crack open the bone to access marrow, fragmenting it to get it out and then blowing into the bone to dislodge the bits of marrow. This is such a wonderful find. Maybe the accidental flute led to more intentional ones. I wonder if the pleasure of making music influenced brain development in both individuals and evolutionarily.

The music she played was hauntingly beautiful! This is a wonderful find that makes me imagine a Neanderthal child laying down to sleep among family and clan, warmed by a fire and lulled by a bone flute lullaby. How well would you sleep!?

Come on, of course they made music with it. If you just wanted to give a signal or just imitate a certain animal sound, the flute would be totally overengineered. You don't cut a bone and drill four holes in it if you don't have to to get what you want. This would be the same as if archeologists in 10000 years found a modern microscope and would speculate that we probably used it to hammer nails in wood.

Musical entertainment plus they could use it as a duck or other animal call. Peruvians also have whistling vessels that mimick different animal calls. This flute has so much versatility... for both calls for hunting and music for entertainment. Nomads travel light, and everything has a multiple function.

Also the people of Australia used a gum leaf to create sound,and they were the ultimate hunter gatherers.Anything is possible if man can think about it,this has been proven over and over.

The range of such a small instrument is astounding. How beautiful. Thank you!

Human history and evolution has been distorted by 'experts' claiming something was impossible. The truth is the little we have learned about our ancestors shows how little we actually do know. Why should they be any less able to invent or discover different items for functional or recreational use than us? After all, they had millions of years to do so. Isn't it likely someone or many people just picked up a hollow bone at some point and blew through it and it produced a sound? Maybe it had a hole in the side of it and accidentally found they could change the tone by blocking it then someone else had the idea of making more holes. Imagination is one of the human race's strongest advantages why should it be just confined to modern humans.

I am struck by the thought that this bone flute was an instrument developed over time from the production of other, simpler flutes, so we are seeing and hearing something that had been developed perhaps over hundreds, if not thousands of years and refined. There is a difficult and multi-step process required to construct this instrument, not counting the acquisition of materials and tools. It would require a lot of practice and multiple attempts, while knowing how the end product would work, which speaks to this being part of a long lineage of flutes. The technology and level of training to create and play these flutes would be a talent well worth having, and could indicate a separation of skilled work, with some people being more capable in this area, while others made better throwing spears, etc.

Neanderthals had a bigger brain size than modern humans, so the fact that people assume that they couldn’t create music just goes to prove that some of us are devolving. Most carry Neanderthal dna

I wonder if flutes were a product of drilling a hole in the bone to get to the marrow and the driller tried blowing the marrow out of the end. He/she was probably mesmerized by the sound.

So hauntingly beautiful. I'm trying not to cry.

The story of a mysterious caveman kazoo.

It's fascinating material you offer to your audience. Thank you very much for contributing. A heartfelt thanks!

Mind Blowing. Excellent discovery !

They probably used it to coordinate hunting parties in dense forest. To avoid alerting game the way a voice would. Most animals would dismiss it as birdcalls.

Amazing! I've been learning to play fipple flutes lately, and was actually just wondering about the earliest origins of flutes recently. Interesting!

The first step to learning something new, Is to let go of the knowledge that is wrong. We are obviously wrong about our ancient ancestors.

Brilliant. Great work. Thank you for sharing.

This made me cry. Thank you.

Very interesting and worthwhile video.

This is amazing. Thank you for sharing

Love how they think it's a musical instrument and not just a whistle to communicate or use to send signal depending on the tone. But Neanderthal probably had the good life making music and dance.

Bravissimo... Sensationell... Thank you so much for this giant sound from our deepest past ! Thank you !

Hauntingly amazing. Thanks for sharing.

The first flute would have to be a harmonic flute otherwise how to determine what notes are. I can get 10 or more harmonics out of the ones I make. After the early 2000's "flute" which had a "scale" I later saw a discovery older from central Europe with a classic notch and knew this was not a fluke but a flute. It don't need holes to make at least octave fifth fourth or more harmonics. This is the same as brass like a bugle no valves or inventions. Length helps. Look up human thighbone trumpet. This is more like an ocarina. Put in just 3 holes and you got fujara an east European native flute. I'd hate to meet the leggy bird or whatever that could make the fujara more than 2 meters long, though!

The woman's diction is perfect and I was able to understand her. She must be an academic professor.

A natural bugle is a signaling device. As soon as you start putting keys or valves or any other modifications on, it becomes an instrument for making melodic music. Same here. If we can play a tune on a replica now, you know they could back then.

Something like that could also be used to communicate during hunts. The tone from the flute would carry sound further than a voice.

Fascinating. I had taken it for an arrow straightener, but the flute idea seems like a winner. As far as imitating animal sounds, it must be remembered that all music is theft. When we learn to play an instrument today, we begin by imitating what we have heard. If you located a human population that had no music, and had never heard any music, and you gave them an instrument, they would use it to copy sounds that they had heard in nature. Great musicians do push the boundaries of what they have heard, but most of us are content to color within the lines of the music that we know.

We can all experiment on this by making 3D printed replicas of the Neanderthal flute and playing with them. I'd buy one.

Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up

The sound woke my cat up out a dead sleep and she had a look of concern on her face.

Concerto De Aranjuez played on a (replica) world's oldest flute!!!!!!!!!!!! WOW!

Love the doc...straight up...

The craziest part is a few things we find from ancient history are just that a few things so much has been lost to time and forgotten except for myth and legends

Love this very much. BTW, compliments to the lady for wearing the traditional lace decoration.

I learned from indigenous hunters that certain high pitch sounds will stop an animal in its tracks. It is, potentially, a weapon first. Given the harsh survival conditions of the time, I suggest it did start out as a tool for hunting that evolved to entertain those full bellies afterwards.

I'm confused... "It changes our previous flawed, one-sided view of Neanderthals as savage barbarians"... I was taught that the Neanderthals were fairly sophisticated; that they practiced ceremonial burial with flowers, made art, had calendars, played music, etc; and that there was no reason to think of them as anything other than normal human beings. So what is this "view of Neanderthals as savage barbarians" that he's talking about??

As a biologist I often struggle with what distinguishes humans from other intelligent animals. I usually come down on the idea that it is artistic expression that distinguishes our species.

What a neat haunting sound. Imagine playing an instrument created in ancient times by something not human. Wow. One can imagine that sound resonating through some primeval forest.

The holes, if reconstructed in a way to have 4 plus and a fifth on the back, is a hand a very simple measurment. But i also love the use of covering the ends becuase i did that all the time as a child with recorders.

It could have also been used as a means of distant communication, like a smoke cloud. Sound travels pretty well and that tool would offer distinct possibilities. There are people in I think south America that use whistles like that. They just use their mouth, but communicate that way in the hills

5:08 wow, they could play “A Feast of Friends’ guitar solo by The Doors (but on that flute. The solo starts 50 seconds into the song)

“In Current Anthropology in August 1998, Philip G. Chase and April Nowell confidently stated that the broken ends of the “flute” are a textbook example of carnivore chewing. On the bones, next to the holes, there are even scratches from the teeth. Of course, Ivan Turk is well done for being able to dig through a bone, but why do Neanderthals need such difficulties, if it is much easier to drill holes? As for the melodies blown by someone on the "Neanderthal flute", then you can play it on any bone with holes if you wish. In the same year, another group of researchers published in the journal ANTIQUITY an analysis of damage to the bones of cave bears from Divje Babe and other sites in Slovenia, with the same conclusion: not a flute was found, but a bone gnawed by animals. In particular, it turned out that among the materials of Divje Babe there is another femur of a young bear with two holes of a similar shape and also on the tubular part! But no one tried to pass off this find as a flute, because it is impossible to play it: the bone is closed at both ends. "Fleutologists" were not going to give up. In 2005, the "flute" was subjected to multislice computed tomography. The tomography seemed to confirm that the semicircular marks from the ends of the bone were left from the destroyed holes, so there are still 4 holes! The analysis, according to the authors, showed that damage to the bone by predators occurred already AFTER the holes appeared on it. The holes themselves were made using stone or bone tools... However, a year later, Iain Morley, in the Oxford Archaeological Journal, thoroughly demolished all the arguments of the “flute” supporters. Morley wrote that the Turk himself admits that the "flute" is gnawed. But why did they chew the bone? To profit from nutritious spongy tissue. And before this tissue is removed, the dice cannot be played, since its ends are closed! So, piercing holes in the bones and making a flute out of it only made sense after the carnivores had done their job. And if so, the teeth of the animals did not destroy any holes - after all, these holes did not exist yet. What does it mean? This means that there could not be 5 or 4 holes on the bone - there are only 2 of them. Stories about "Irish melodies" and "diatonic scales" can go on like a forest, as well as all kinds of reconstructions of the flute. As for the theoretical method of making holes: they can probably be obtained by scraping, as Turk proves. But where are the tools suitable for such a purpose? No such tools were found in layer 8. Why fantasize when there is the simplest explanation - a predatory animal? Perhaps it was a cannibal cave bear who decided to profit from the cub. In 2015, Czech researcher Cajus G. Diedrich conducted a rigorous analysis of bear bones with gnawing and holes from 15 European sites. There are many such finds, because the cave bear was a typical prey for predators of glacial Europe - lions, leopards, wolves. However, the spotted hyena, of course, acted as the main "bone-crawler". It was she, says Didrich, who bit into a number of finds that were mistakenly taken by researchers for “flutes” (I remind you that the bone from Divje Babe is far from the first artifact of this kind). Of course, the holes were not left from the fangs of the hyena - she never crushes bones with her fangs - but from her powerful upper premolars, the shape and size of which the holes are ideally suited for. There are also marks on the opposite side of the bone - from the corresponding teeth on the lower jaw. Why are there so many bear bones in the human camp? Probably, a man inhabited the cave of Divje Babe not constantly, but seasonally. This lifestyle is typical of nomadic hunter-gatherer groups. People left - bears came; hyenas visited the bears. It is characteristic that holes from hyena teeth are often located on the bones of cubs, less often on the bones of adolescents, and never on adult bears. The reason is that the bones of the cubs are soft and easily bitten, and the thick bones of large hyena bears were simply split into pieces. Well, if a hyena bites through 200 bones in a row, among this pile there are a couple that look like flutes, just according to probability theory. So, according to Diedrich, hyenas have been producing “pseudo-flutes” for thousands of years in cave bear dens all over Europe. In this chapter, I have mentioned only a small part of the pro et contra "flute" publications. Are the supporters of the Neanderthal pipe, after 20 years, ready to sheathe their swords and admit defeat? I doubt. There will be enough for both sides for another 15 years. Well, outside of science, the myth will live. After all, firstly, “a scientifically proven ancient musical instrument” is a good way to attract tourists to some Eastern European cities. And, secondly, the Neanderthal flutist boy is so cute! For the sake of completeness, I have to mention the REAL stone age bone flutes. These are indeed found, however, they all belong to the Upper Paleolithic and were made by representatives of Homo sapiens. The oldest instrument of this kind, found in Hole Fels (Germany), is more than 35 thousand years old. I note that this time the flute, made from the radius of the griffon vulture, has all the signs of a man-made object. There are 5 holes on it - really holes, and not hints of them (4 are completely preserved, on the 5th the bone is broken off). The end of the flute, which was probably blown, is also decorated. Neat notches are visible next to the holes - the ancient master marked the places where he would cut holes." From an article on the site "22nd century", Alexander Sokolov.

If you’ve hunted deer, then you know that a short, loud whistle sound can be used to make the deer “freeze”in place, before shooting.

If they could paint such.fantastic animals on cave roofs,they could easily create such an instrument.

Neanderthal spirits looking down on the human species for a minute there like, "When are they gonna realize that they are playing it upside down!?"

What beautiful remarks from the flautist at the end 🙏

for me as a string-musician but still a fan of blasting instruments, like flutes or didgeridoos, it was clear the stringed ones comes later, cause their construction is much more complex. ntw, both of them are necessary for a healthy human mind, cause frequencies are there for good. h.m.

Obviously this device was constructed through planning. The idea that it made desired sounds, yet WASN'T used to make desired sounds (like music)... is an unsupported notion in need of evidence. This looks "musical" until shown otherwise. You can't pretend evidence away just because your opinion didn't like it.

Birds make music. Early humans heard birds. It’s definitely a musical instrument.

Fascinating!

Maybe it was formed while the bone was fresh because fresh bones are much softer and easier to cut.

When Ugg first beat on a log, Jazz was born.

Amazing to hear its range. Such a range is not necessary for animal calls. Such a range is needed for complex music.

@6:00 playing Bach Adagio on a 60.000 year old flute replica; now I've seen everything.

I love that they put the ewi up there

One thing that I have learned over the years is to never, ever believe when a scientist claims to know the beginning of anything. If I had a nickel for every time someone blurted out there findings, I'd be rich.

More proof that these people had a heart and soul.

I can imagine a neanderthal person playing the flute around the hearth on a rainy night entertaining family and friends while they accompany with vocal impressions...a sing-a-long if you will. "Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya!"

Seems to me it could be very useful for communicating with others at a distance... which would be very helpful back in the day!!!

So, when the scientists found a flute, they didn't believe it was a flute until they did research, even though it was obvious it was, because they assumed that ancient humans were stupid and slowly evolved to get smarter and were not yet smart enough at that time to make a flute for any reason, especially not to make music. That line of thinking is what literally makes scientists deny then finally re-write history. Can you scientists not see what's obviously right in front of you? Of course ancient humans who were just as intelligent as us also did the things we do.

"Death makes angels of us all And gives us wings Where we had shoulders Smooth as raven's claws" - Jim

I'm glad more people are taking this seriously. It seems to me that holes lined up couldn't have been punctured by teeth and coincidentally tuned to a diatonic tetrachord. How sophisticates would Neanderthals or early Humans have to be to produce this? Trial and error doesn't require a great amount of brain power. They would work on different flutes until they found an arrangement of holes that produced the most pleasing sounds to them. I'm sure they needed this, like they needed speech, because music, like speech, is an identity function.

It is unthinkable to believe that Neanderthals didn't speak, sing or dance.

Amazing

You spelled artifact wrong but this was pretty neat!

A friendly reminder to ignore/ report the spam bots with links. :-)

I can only imagine if she could go back and play that beautiful song for them, their minds would be blown away.

Since the dawn of man there’s have always loved Einsteins and Mozarts. Why is this discovery so amazing? We act like only modern humans had any intelligence. How short sighted and stupid of us

I think that just like with people today, there would have been some members of the group who found they had particular skill with making music, some were good at performing it, some were better at making the flute, and all of them loved loved loved being able to hear beautiful sounds. Just like happens today, and has happened for ages. I do understand that using a carefully reasoned approach is correct for those who dedicate their lives to study and understanding of our ancestors. And if they just blabbed out things like what I wrote above, they'd be, rightfully, laughed out of their jobs. But I'm delighted to know that people so long ago were able to enjoy music. If one thinks about how huge the music "industry" is, how globe-wide the love and fascination w/music is - it is such a powerful innate feeling.

i think i like to think it was a call of some sort, dramatic to imagine someone putting it down long ago then someone picking it up in an epic time lapse

Fascinating

used as a signalling device, most likely. Perhaps they also sat around the cave fire and held impromptu jams.

The fact that many scientists believe that Neanderthals vocal capability is limited further strengthens the idea that they sang, danced and played music.

Mimicking is standard child development and experimentation with whatever comes to hand. Caves are Auditoriums, naturally.

Amazing.

Since there were hollow objects found, man blew t in them. Some had holes in them and noises were heard. Since the beginning of time whistles were used as communication and calling animals and people. There was initially no real physics involved. Nor much of a thought process.

Could it also have been a communication device to communicate location and perhaps other information between different groups? Addendum: also some classical or jazz composer needs to compose a piece around this instrument.

Truly fascinating i had no idea neanderthals were capable of making a musical instrument.

BRAVO! And CHEERS from CALIFORNIA !

I bet the first discovery was. A random cave man sucking the marrow out of that bone then made an interesting sound.

Very interesting! What is more amazing to me than that our "cousins" made music is that it took a musician/archeologist to blow through the end that waa shaped like a reed to see how it was most likely used. I can almost see a Far Side with Thag shaking his head as a bunch of scientists blow into the bell of a trumpet. Love the discovery!! Our family tree wouldn't make sense if we assumed brute to brainiac in one recent evolutionary twist.

So utterly cool

It would be interesting to research how this compares to Australian Aborigines tools and musical instruments etc….around this time. I understand they go back about 75 thousand years in Australia…and just over 40 thousand years for a persons skeletal remains from north of Adelaide…. Laurie. NZ.

What a surprise! Modern humanoids underestimate the intelligence of another creature. The whole history of science is a continuous finding that animals/early humans/birds/fish/whales are far more intelligent and sophisticated than we ever thought.

me quedo sin palabras, sencillamente maravilloso