Music
Flutes carved from swan bone and mammoth ivory, tuned and playable, 42,000 years old.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 2 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
Caves in the Swabian Jura have produced several flutes, the best preserved made from a griffon vulture's radius with five finger holes and V-shaped notches cut at the mouth end. Replicas play a recognisable scale. The mammoth ivory examples are far harder to make — the tusk must be split, hollowed, and glued back together airtight. Music leaves almost no trace, so these instruments stand in for an entire dimension of prehistoric life that is otherwise lost.