Listen to music made with the oldest musical instrument (43,000 years old!)

Who was the first to make music? At this point, archeology says it wasn’t us. The first musicians were neanderthals.

This theory is based on some archeological discoveries in the late 90s of a flute made of bone dated to 43,000 years ago, maybe more. The holes on the flute correspond to four notes of the diatonic scale, that is, do, re, me. fa. The flute in question is on display in the National Museum of Slovenia.

Photo: Petar Milošević via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A clay model was made of the flute, which was handed to a musician named Ljuben Dimkarsoski with instructions to learn out to play it. Given that he had four recognizable notes to deal with, it wasn’t hard.

Let’s have a listen. More info here.