The Oldest Flutes Known to Mankind

Summer rain in the Ach Valley. Heavy raindrops create a unique soundscape as they fall on the trees surrounding the Hohle Fels World Heritage Site. Flutist Anne Friederike Potengowski stands sheltered by the rock massif and plays a replica of a 38,000-year-old wind instrument made from a vulture's bone, which was excavated in the cave in 2008. The audience moves closer together to listen to the soft, melodic sounds. Just a few steps further on, the hall cave opens up, as large as a soccer field, with a steeply rising floor at the back. Here, the bone instrument sounds again, filling the space with its bright and clear tone. Hohle Fels – a cathedral of the Ice Age. Here, sound and space combine with the breathless silence of the listeners. The darkness and the sound of water droplets keep the senses alert, sometimes close, sometimes distant. Every movement of the neighbour becomes audible and perceptible. A cluster of sounds emerges when the musician asks the group to hum any note, which, after a few moments, becomes a single tone as the group walks through the cave in unison.

Singing comes easily to Homo sapiens, but in reality, it is a remarkable evolutionary achievement. As early as 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had the biological capacity to sing: “From the shape of the hyoid bone (...) and the size of the skull, it can be concluded that Homo sapiens was able to sing thanks to its physical and cognitive abilities,” wrote musician and biologist Christian Lehmann.

His colleague, British evolutionary biologist John R. Skoyles, goes one step further: “We cannot sing because we can speak, but we can speak because we can sing.” Infants first grasp the musical aspects of language and babble in a musical singsong at around 10 months of age. This is also confirmed by Stefan Koelsch, psychologist at the MPI in Leipzig: “We suspect that Broca's area, which is responsible for language, originally processed music and only served language development in the course of evolutionary history.” Regardless of whether music and dance serve as an indicator of fitness or to calm an infant, their strongest evolutionary driving force is their social function. Rhythm and sound synchronise people not only in physical movement, but also in the brain. The limbic system stimulates the same areas as when eating or having sex, an indication of how important music is for social cohesion. The idea that music is more than “aesthetic cheesecake,” as evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in his 1997 book “How the Mind Works,” describing music as a meaningless by-product of evolution and of no use to humans, has now been refuted.

Three different wind instruments on display at the Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art show that music was an important part of everyday life 40,000 years ago. Musician Anne Friederike Potengowski has recorded sound samples for the two instruments made from bird bones and another from mammoth ivory, which demonstrate the playful possibilities and special features of the wind instruments. It is not possible to reconstruct how the instruments were played at that time and what musical preferences people had based on the finds. Too many factors influence the sound. And there are other factors that are discussed: Are the instruments (even if only fragments remain) complete, or are mouthpieces made of organic material missing, which have not been preserved? Are they simple “flutes” or are the Stone Age aerophones shawms or oboes? Experimental archaeologist Jean-Loup Ringot adds mouthpieces made of birch bark or quills to the instruments to make them playable. He pays particular attention to the vulture bone flute excavated in Hohle Fels in 2008, which Anne Friederike plays as a slanted flute, i.e., over the edge. The narrow, 21-centimetre-long bone is hardly playable due to the long notch at the other end. Complemented by a simple piece of bark, it becomes a Stone Age clarinet with a piercing, squeaky sound. The pressure applied when playing now makes all five holes of the instrument playable. A mouthpiece made from a quill or a double reed produces a similarly good result. The instruments with mouthpieces are on display in the “Transformation” room, where videos clearly show how the instruments are made from bone and ivory. Audio samples of the different reconstructions can be listened to on the museum's digital audio guide.