Toot on a flute – an ice-age one
p2pnet news view | Cool:- Anyone who loves music, which means just about everyone, knows it really is essential to our well being and contentment.
Of course, the corporate music industry is suffering under the delusion that music exists purely for the purpose of fattening wallets — its wallets.
Music in one form or another has been around considerably longer than the rapacious Big 4 record labels, and will be around long after they’re nothing more than very bad memories.
In fact, people have been enjoying it for a lot longer may be imagined, says a study reporting the discovery of four ancient flutes made of vulture bone and mammoth tusks.
Nicholas Conard at Tubingen University and his colleagues report in the journal Nature a, “spectacular discovery: four flutes, buried in Ice Age garbage heaps in the caves of Germany,” says NPR, going on:
“They date back 35,000 to 40,000 years, making them the oldest undisputed musical instruments.”
One flute is made from a vulture wing bone and is about a foot long, while another was carved from mammoth tusks, says the story, quoting Conard as saying:
“That’s really quite a surprise that flutes would be made out of massive mammoth ivory, which is material that’s very hard to work, and not just bird bones, which are hollow and ideal for making flutes.”
He suspects the ivory flutes were favored, “because they produced a deeper, richer tone,” says the story, adding:
“He says archaeologists have found similar ivory flutes in more recent cave deposits in the same region.”
NPR – A Little Flute Music To Warm The Cave, June 24, 2009
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
“Tout on a flute”…
Sounds like a variation of what I’ve been saying to Bell.
: )