Evidence of sound-making instruments during the Old Stone Age is extremely rare, with only a few examples recorded from Upper Paleolithic contexts, especially in European cultures. Further investigations, however, suggest that such kinds of artifacts could have also existed elsewhere in the world.
Rare Prehistoric Musical Instrument
In an archeological site in northern Israel, a team of researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University have unearthed 12,000-year-old musical instruments that appear to be prehistoric flutes. The discovery was incredibly rare since not much is known about music-making from this period.
The prehistoric site of Eynan-Mallaha has been thoroughly studied since 1955, but it still holds surprising finds. Last year, a team of Franco-Israeli archeologists found seven miniature flutes carved by artisans out of the bones of small waterfowl and scattered among a stockpile of 1,100 bird bones.
Lead researchers Dr. Laurent Davin and Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily confirmed that one of the flutes was still intact, being the only one in the world in this state of preservation. The flutes or aerophones belonged to the Natufians, who lived between 13,000 B.C. and 9,700 B.C. Experts believe this discovery helps reveal the long-lost piece of musical history in human society.
Archeologists were puzzled by the size of the newly discovered flutes. Analysis of the instruments revealed that the flutes measured 63.4 mm long and 4 mm wide. This size would have required a certain amount of training and a level of dexterity from its player. Since the flute's holes have proximity, it would have also required a certain level of agility to master playing the instrument. Furthermore, the instrument's size allowed the flute to produce a high-pitched sound that could have imitated the sounds of prehistoric birds of prey living in the area during that time.
Experts are still unsure if the miniature flutes were used for general music-making. There is also a theory that these instruments were used to attract birds of prey to the hunters, which could have been shot down. According to Dr. Khalaily, if the aerophones were indeed used for hunting, then this is the earliest evidence of the use of sound in hunting.
Who Were the Natufians?
Natufians were some of the last hunter-gatherers in the Levant or Near East region in modern-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria approximately 11,500 to 15,000 years ago. This group was regarded as the first population in human history to build permanent houses and cultivate edible plants. The advancements they achieved are considered crucial to the development of agriculture during the periods that succeeded them.
As hunters, the Natufians supplemented their diet by gathering wild grains they did not cultivate. They harvest grain using sickles of flint blades attached to straight bone handles, while they grind it using stone mortars and pestles.
Some groups of Natufians lived in caves, while others settled in incipient villages. A study conducted by archaeologists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and the University of Copenhagen suggests that the Natufians spread very quickly into the region or that the settlement patterns emerged in different parts of the Levant.
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