Prehistoric instruments

Music is one of the most difficult principles to seek in human origins. Their traces are not at all obvious and neither are their objects. Archaeology showed us the first material evidence of the Paleolithic period, with which it was possible to determine a more or less exact dating of the appearance of the first musical objects.

The majority of the objects come from contexts associated with Homo sapiens, i. e. from the Upper Palaeolithic, but there are still doubts as to whether the species of Neanderthal can be classified as a species capable of producing music. In any case, there was not enough physical evidence to strongly assert that this species normally made musical instruments (Morley, 2013).

Most of these found objects are flutes made from perforated bird diaphyses that have more or less a similar structure and respond to the same need (Buisson, 1990). There are also other rather unknown categories of instruments, such as whistles or lithophones, that are not so easy to recognize. Therefore, it must be taken into account that these instruments whose morphology is the most similar to the current one are more easily identified. Thus, we must recognize that the study of musical instruments has been biased for a partial vision devoted to the investigation of the objects most familiar to us: the flutes.

Fig. 1 - Whistle on phalanx . L'abri de Laugerie-Basse, Dordogne, France

The flutes have been present since the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, including the periods of the Aurignacian (40,000 to 29,000 BP), Gravettien (31,000 to 22,000 BP), Magdalenian (17,000 to 12,000 BP) and there are also some examples in Solutréan (22,000 to 17,000 BP). Most of the flutes belong to the Gravettien (Morley, 2013). This is the case of Isturitz (Atlantic Pyrenees), one of the most spectacular sites for the finds of Palaeolithic flutes. Isturitz is a cave where the complete sequence of the Upper Palaeolithic can be found. In this sequence the manifestations of art are present from the very beginning: objects of bone, wood and ivory decorated and perforated, engraved stone plates, parietal art and an ornate stalagmite with acoustic properties. The fact that the flutes appear during all the chronological phases suggests that the site has a series of specific characteristics (acoustic, raw materials, location) that facilitate the production of this type of instruments. Some diaphyses of birds used for the manufacture of flutes could be identified as belonging to the Accipitriform family (or day raptors), but because of anthropogenic transformations and fragmenting of the pieces it is not possible to make an easy taxonomic classification. There are very complete parts and parts in very poor condition, but thanks to the large quantity of material we were able to identify different manufacturing stages. Different types of decorations have also been identified, such as fine parallel incisions or wavy lines through the flute (Buisson, 1990).

Fig. 2 - Detail of a flute from the Isturitz, French site, where we see parallel incisions next to a prepared hole.

The other flute production centre is located in the Swabian Jura (in German, Schwäbische Alb) which is a mountain range in south-western Germany. There, there are various caves (Geissenklösterle, Hohle Fels, Vogelherd) with famous examples of symbolic elements such as animal and human sculptures, engravings and other symbolic elements. All the flutes found come from the Aurignacien and belong to the same manufacturing tradition. They are made with different radii of swan (Cygnus cygnus), tawny vulture (Gyps fulvus) and mammoth ivory (Mammuthus primigenius) (Morley, 2013). Different manufacturing steps have also been identified in the sites, since the transformation of the bone into a flute is a process that leaves characteristic and identifiable traces to reconstitute the operating chain. In addition, the treatment of ivory to make it into a flute is much more complex than the treatment of bird bones; this means that there was a highly developed technique specifically for this type of instrument. One can see clearly that the process is particularly different for the characteristics that the flute presents: there are striations by all the object which show us that their shape was sculpted with great precision and especially at the moment in which the craftsman carefully split the piece along the natural layers of ivory (Conard, 2005).

Fig. 3- Geissenklösterle flute

Fig. 4 - Hohle Fels flute