Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup mills-tuning-list RE: Scale of Neanderthal flute

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There was an article in the current issue of "Discover" magazine (April or May 1997 issue) with a picture of the Neanderthal Flute. The authors evidently concluded that it was a nose flute on the basis that a plug on the end fitted very well into "sinus cavities" of a Neanderthal skull (how one blows a nose flute through a sinus cavity is beyond me - sounds messy). The picture clearly shows 16 finger holes which look roughly equally spaced and similar in size. The presence of 16 holes suggests that they either used valves (clamshell or bone hole covers with rawhide pads?? bone springs??) or that they needed more than two hands to play it. Of course, the Neanderthal musician may just have simply used the holes to generate an warbling sound by sliding his palm back and forth across the holes. Who knows how sophisticated they were? Their brain size averages out to be bigger than ours. The authors also speculated that some cave wall symbols were a form of musical notation. Interesting, but hard to prove, one way or another. The whole article may have been a bit tongue-in-cheek, because it also contains the speculation that the reason the Neanderthal became extinct was that the noise of their music frightened all the game away!
Clif Ashcraft

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From: Gary Morrison[SMTP:mr88cet@texas.net]
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 1997 7:57 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Scale of Neanderthal flute

>The Ethnomusicology Research Digest just posted information about the
>world's oldest known musical instrument, a 43,000-82,000 year old bone
>flute.

Thanks Bill, for posting this. The web page is also very interesting.

I haven't read the entire article yet, but at first blush, there is one
thing about this however that strikes me as iffy: This apparent flute's
embouchure hole (the hole you blow across) has been destroyed, so it's very
difficult to be sure of its length. That not being known, it would be
impossible to tell what tuning it plays.

One other nitpicky thing: Calling it between 43,000 and 82,000 years
old is a kind of weird way to treat numerical precision. If you're not
sure how many TENS of thousands of years old the thing is, then how many
individual thousands on top of that is irrelevant. But that's a minor
question.

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RE: Scale of Neanderthal flute

🔗"Ashcraft AC (Clif)" <aaaabb1@...>

🔗Joseph Downing <jdowning@...>