Knowra Prehistoric music Prehistoric music Prehistoric music is music made before written records. It is reconstructed chiefly from archaeological instruments and images, alongside cautious comparisons with living musical traditions.
Archaeomusicology : The study of music in past societies using archaeological, historical, and acoustic evidence. This field combines the material evidence used to reconstruct music before writing.
Divje Babe flute : A perforated cave-bear femur from Slovenia, dated to the Middle Paleolithic and interpreted by some as a flute. Its status as a Neanderthal-made instrument remains disputed, making it a striking test case.
Aerophone : A musical instrument that produces sound primarily through the vibration of air. Many surviving prehistoric sound-makers are tubes or flutes that operate this way.
Neanderthal music : The debated possibility that Neanderthals produced music or musical sounds before the arrival of modern humans in Europe. The disputed Divje Babe find concentrates uncertainty about music before the Upper Paleolithic.
Musical instrument : An object designed or adapted to produce musical sound. Instrument types provide the clearest surviving evidence of prehistoric music-making.
Hohle Fels flute : A roughly 40,000-year-old flute fragment made from a griffon vulture wing bone, found in southwestern Germany. Its crafted finger holes provide strong evidence for Upper Paleolithic wind instruments.
Bone flute : A flute made from an animal bone, with openings that shape airflow and pitch. Bone flutes are among the best-preserved candidates for prehistoric melodic instruments.
Prehistoric percussion : Rhythmic sound-making in prehistory using struck objects, whose traces are often difficult to identify archaeologically. Percussion may have left fewer durable, distinctive remains than bone or ivory flutes.
Archaeological context : The spatial, chronological, and depositional circumstances in which an archaeological object is found. Context helps distinguish deliberate instruments from objects with accidental sound-producing properties.
Geißenklösterle flutes : Paleolithic flutes made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, excavated in the Swabian Jura of Germany. These finds show that early flute-making used more than one material and construction method.
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