Ongoing History Daily: Who invented music?

Here’s a simple question with a complicated answer: Who invented music? The answer is “No one knows.” We don’t know who was the first to sing a song or the first to conjure music from some kind of tool. But we do know that the earliest civilizations were into music.

It probably started with singing short melodic lines tens and tens of thousands of years ago, maybe as a way to imitate birdsong. Maybe singing evolved from calming infants, meaning that the earliest songs may have been lullabies.

What about musical instruments? Archaeologists have found whistles and flutes made of bone, stone, and pottery, some of which have been dated to 30,000 years ago.