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Thursday, September 23, 1999 Published at 01:54 GMT 02:54 UK

Sci/Tech

The bone age flute

Some of the 30 flutes unearthed. The longest is 24 cm (9 inches) long.

By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

It could be the sound that accompanied Neolithic rituals or perhaps it just drifted over the campfire into the night when civilisation was young. Perhaps it was the first music mankind ever made?

Hear Taoying Xu play the bone flute <http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/450000/audio/_454594_flutes.ram>

It is the sound of a prehistoric flute, and it has been heard again after nine millennia.

Writing in the journal Nature, Garman Harbottle of Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and colleagues from China describe flutes made from bird bones recovered from the Jiahu archaeological site in Henan Province, China.

Jiahu is a remarkable site that has only been partially excavated. It contains 300 graves as well as the remnants of ancient dwellings and artefacts.

Bird bones

The 9,000-year-old flutes are made from hollowed bird bones, and have between 5 and 8 holes. Remarkably, one of the flutes is still playable.

It may be one of the oldest musical instruments ever played, although scientists do know of a 45,000-year-old, so-called Neanderthal flute made of a hollow bear bone that was dug up in Slovenia in 1995.

The Chinese flute is capable not just of single notes but of what we would class as music. Listen to Taoying Xu playing a fragment of a Chinese folk song called the Xiao Bai Cai or 'the Chinese Small Cabbage.'

It is a haunting sound that comes to us from the dawn of civilisation.

Scientists say that this research only scratches the surface of discoveries made at Jiahu, which was occupied between around 7,000 and 5,700 BC.

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Ancient China - Part 2

Archaeologists Find Oldest Playable Flute In China

Some of 30 flutes unearthed

September 22, 1999 - Reuters - London

Archaeologists have found the world's oldest playable flute in China.

The 9,000 year-old, 8.6 inch instrument in pristine condition has seven holes and was made from a hollow bone of a bird, the red-crowned crane.

It is one of six flutes and 30 fragments recovered from the Jiahu archaeological site in Henan province.

``They are the oldest playable musical instruments,'' Garman Harbottle, of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, said in a telephone interview.

A fragment of a 45,000 year-old flute was previously found in Slovenia but it could not be played.

A short rendition of a Chinese folk song called the Chinese Small Cabbage, played on the ancient instrument can be heard on the web site of the science journal Nature where the findings were published Wednesday (http:/www.nature.com).

``It sounds like a modern flute. It has a thin tone. It's very attractive,'' a nuclear scientist, who assisted researchers from the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Henan on the project, said.

``As the editor of Nature said, 'It gives you an eerie feeling to hear it played on an instrument that old','' he added.

The researchers believe the site will turn out to be one of the most important Neolithic sites ever found. In addition to proving that the early Chinese were accomplished musicians and craftspeople the Jiahu site also reveals much about their culture.

``It appears that the culture was more advanced than we were giving them credit for.''

``During this period 9,000 years ago, the Chinese in this village Jiahu already had established a village life. They had parts of the city, or village that were devoted to different functions,'' said Harbottle.

Some of the other flutes, which have between five and eight holes, could also be played but produced a cracking sound that alarmed researchers who feared the instruments could be damaged.

The scientists plan to make replicas of the ancient instruments to study their tonal qualities without endangering the instruments.

THE STUDY OF SCALE TESTING OF THE MOST RECENTLY

EXCAVATED JIAHU BONE FLUTE

Xu, Fei; Xia, Ji; Wang, Changsui;

(Univ. of Sci. & Tech. of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China)

In last meeting at Amsterdam 2002, we have made a presentation to introduce our

research on the oldest playable instruments in the world, the bone flute discover in China.

We have promise to show some more information including vivid music and video about

the bone flute so that let our colleagues have an opportunity to listen the sound from 8000

thousand years ago. In this paper, the scale testing of the most recently excavated(2001)

Chinese ancient bone flute is analyzed. It was discovered that the bone flute should be

played obliquely, it can make at least two octaves, seven-hole bone flute can usually play

seven-tone scale. In the standard of the twelve tone equal temperament, the error is

beyond perception for average people. Considering the technique correction of actual

playing, the Chinese ancient bone flute¡¯s accuracy is a prehistoric miracle. If the paper

accepted, we will show a short film of original bone flute performance as our special gift

to the conference too.

From : http://www.shakuhachi.com/K-9KChineseFlutes-Nature.html

...... The music research team did not use the modern standard of A4 = 440 Hz, but instead adopted an arbitrary standard of hole 5 = 'C6'. (Based on A4 = 440 Hz, the actual tone of hole 5 was C6 + 2 Hz(20 Hz), averaged over eight trials.)
Then the interval relationships of the sounds from hole 3 to hole 7 fitted reasonably well to the note sequence E6, D6, C6, B5, A5, with the tone of hole 1 = A6 and hole 2 = F#6. On this scale, the tone of the whole tube is G5 or F#5. In Table 1 three of the intervals in M282:20 are evaluated numerically.

TABLE1: Location Av'g value (Cents) Description
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Btwn hole 1&2 284 minor 3rd
Btwn hole 2&3 244 >maj2nd (whole tone)
Btwn hole 7&tube 260 <minor 3rd but >whole tone

Tests revealed that the tiny hole next to hole 7 (Fig. 1) was probably drilled to correct the off-pitch tone of the original hole 7; thus a tone of G#5 + 16 Hz was corrected to A5 - 11 Hz, which is much closer to the octave of A6 - 36 Hz.

Without testing more flutes, we cannot say whether the tonal scale of the bone flute of Jiahu (M282:20) is the ancestor of either the six-tone Qing Shan scale or the seven-tone Xia Shi scale........

Shahin mohajeri

tombak player and researcher , composer

www.geocities.com/acousticsoftombak

my tombak musics : www.rhythmweb.com/gdg

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The 9,000-year-old bone age flute from China , u can hear sound of the flute

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