35 Thousand Year Old Musical Instrument Unearthed

One of the oldest questions of both philosophy and anthropology is, "When did humans begin to make music?" This can be answered in many ways for music can be made without instruments of any kind. This type of vocal/physical music cannot be traced, but musical instruments can be.
Previously, the oldest archaeological evidence for musical instruments dated to around 30 thousand years in the past, with

"...the earliest secure archaeological evidence for music [coming] from sites in France and Austria and post-date 30,000 years ago." - ( Science Daily )

In the summer of 2008, excavations took place in Germany which have pushed back our understanding of humanity's music-making abilities. These took place at

the sites of Hohle Fels and Vogelherd. . . The most significant of these finds, a nearly complete bone flute, was recovered in the basal Aurignacian deposits at Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley, 20 km west of Ulm. The flute was found in 12 pieces. The fragments were distributed over a vertical distance of 3 cm over a horizontal area of about 10 x 20 cm. This flute is by far the most complete of all of the musical instruments thus far recovered from the caves of Swabia.

This is an image of the amazing find.

The beauty of this find and it's dating is that it shows that humans were already music-makers and instrument-makers at the time they colonized what is now modern-day Europe. Along with the preserved bone flute, several pieces of ivory flutes were discovered.

The preserved portion of the bone flute from Hohle Fels has a length of 21.8 cm and a diameter of about 8 mm. The flute preserves five finger holes. The surfaces of the flute and the structure of the bone are in excellent condition and reveal many details about the manufacture of the flute. The maker carved two deep, V-shaped notches into one end of the instrument, presumably to form the proximal end of the flute into which the musician blew. The find density in this stratum is moderately high with much flint knapping debris, worked bone and ivory, bones of horse, reindeer, mammoth, cave bear, ibex, as well as burnt bone. No diagnostic human bones have been found in deposits of the Swabian Aurignacian, but we assume that modern humans produced the artifacts from the basal Aurignacian deposits shortly after their arrival in the region following a migration up the Danube Corridor.
The 10 radiocarbon dates from the basal Aurignacian fall between 31,000 and 40,000 years before present. Available calibrations and independent controls using other methods indicate that the flutes from Hohle Fels predate 35,000 calendar years ago. Apart from the caves of the Swabian Jura there is no convincing evidence for musical instruments predating 30,000 years before present.
These finds demonstrate that music played an important role in Aurignacian life in the Ach and Lone valleys of southwestern Germany. Most of these flutes are from archaeological contexts containing an abundance of organic and lithic artifacts, hunted fauna, and burnt bone. This evidence suggests that the inhabitants of the sites played musical instruments in diverse social and cultural contexts and that flutes were discarded with many other forms of occupational debris. - ( Science Daily )

The human condition includes the need to make and appreciate what we call music. It is evident in every single culture studied, from the present day to the prehistoric past. -FUPPETS- is comforted by this knowledge.

Primates are Ass-Kickin'

Humans are primates. You are a primate. Your momma is a primate. That is not an insult (unless you're ignorant). In our classification of all living things, we are lumped in with the primates. There are different kinds of primate categories, some containing a variety of animal species, and some with just one member. Here they are for your perusal.

LEMURS

LORIDS

The AYE-AYE (a very odd looking animal)

GALAGOS (also known as "bush babies")

TARSIERS

MONKEYS

and APES (the group humans belong to, along with Orangutans, Gorillas, and Chimpanzees)

Scientists have studied the fossil record and account for many many more primate species that are now extinct. Recently, one such fossil was discovered (see image below) which seems to be an in-between species, linking. . .

the evolutionary split between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their more distant relatives such as lemurs. ( National Geographic )

The fossil record is constantly being updated and filled in and it is wonderful to see that new species are constantly being discovered. Life is omnipresent, once it begins, and the varieties are as endless as the environments they inhabit. The 49 million year old fossil above, named "IDA," is very highly preserved.

"From this time period there are very few fossils, and they tend to be an isolated tooth here or maybe a tailbone there," Richmond explained. "So you can't say a whole lot of what that [type of fossil] represents in terms of evolutionary history or biology."
In Ida's case, scientists were able to examine fossil evidence of fur and soft tissue and even picked through the remains of her last meal: fruits, seeds, and leaves.
Ida, properly known as Darwinius masillae, has a unique anatomy. The lemur-like skeleton features primate-like characteristics, including grasping hands, opposable thumbs, clawless digits with nails, and relatively short limbs.

-FUPPETS- would like to thank fugazifan, one of the primo bad-asses at the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum, for providing the link to this article.

Oldest Piece of Figurative Art found

The above image, labeled the "Venus of the Hohle Fels", has been carbon dated to an age of over 32,000 years old. It was discovered last September in six different pieces during the excavation of a cave at Schelklingen in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany. It appears to have been carved out of mammoth tusk with stone age tools. As far as the scientific record shows, this is the oldest known example of a figurative artwork in existence. There is no consensus, but it is very interesting and puzzling as to why figurative art is not found before 30-35 thousand years ago.
In southern Africa, the very cradle of humanity, painted abstract images have been found that date to a time over 75,000 years ago.
Of course, people assume this was some sort of totemic fertility icon, but it could just as easily be the very first sexually arousing art, or as we term it in these ridiculous days we live in, pornography. Note what is accentuated by the artist: the fleshy buttocks, the thick thighs, the huge pendulous breasts, the engorged and oversize labia. These things do not necessarily point to fertility. A fertility goddess should show a woman who is pregnant, should it not? This appears to be more fetishistic, more of a lusty carving by a lonely man, easy to carry with you on long hunting expeditions, allowing him to stroke it to satiate his lust, but there is really no way to know.
Here are some other examples of what are dubbed "Venus" figures, after the Greek/Roman goddess of love and fertility. The first is the famous Venus of Willendorf, or as she is now known, the Woman of Willendorf, discovered in 1908 in lower Austria.

This is the Venus of Laussel, discovered in central France and dated from between 21,000 and 18,000 BC. This more definitely pertains to the correlation between the human female menstrual cycle and the phases of the Moon, which was most certainly known and noted by ancient humans.

The carving below is a ceramic statuette titled the Venus of Dolní Vestonice.
It was discovered in a Paleolithic site dating between 29,000 and 25,000 BC, and located in Moravia, of the former Czechoslovakia. It is the world's earliest example of fired clay, predating the pottery we know by millenia.

DEAD SEA SCROLLS For Everybody!

The Dead Sea Scrolls are an amazing trove of ancient parchment discovered by Bedouin shepherds near the Dead Sea in 1947. The story goes that a shepherd was looking for a sheep, when he stumbled across a dark cave, one of 11. To see whether anything was inside he tossed a rock and what he heard was the sound of breaking pottery.


Going inside he discovered what turned out to be the earliest existing versions of Biblical and Apocryphal texts ever found, dating from before 200 A.D. Before this discovery the oldest Biblical texts were from around 900 A.D.
That is an amazing thing, and these bad motherfuckers are still being translated to this day. Of course there is considerable decay and difficulty in reading 2000 year old writing, but the scientists are ass-kicking and diligent.



The good people at the Israel Antiquities Authority are painstakingly scanning each of the scrolls and will be making them available for anyone online! That is so fucking cool! Now, there are not many people that can read ancient languages but FUCK, it would be sweet to see some of these fucking things. The collected scrolls are called the Qumran Library, and contain a lot more than just Biblical passages.

According to many scholars, the chief categories represented among the
Dead Sea Scrolls are:

Biblical
Those works contained in the Hebrew Bible. All of the books of the Bible are represented in the Dead Sea Scroll collection except Esther.

Apocryphal or pseudepigraphical
Those works which are omitted from various canons of the Bible and included in others.

Sectarian
Those scrolls related to a pietistic commune and include ordinances, biblical commentaries, apocalyptic visions, and liturgical works. (from Ibiblio.org)

-FUPPETS- loves the future for it is here.

Getting Hard For Ancient Libraries

The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its long-held secrets (from The Australian)

When Vesuvius erupted it buried two thriving port cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum. There were several very rich people living there, and their lavish mansions were preserved.
One of these mansions contained a large papyrus scroll library, which is being excavated. Check out the following excerpt from the above-linked story.

The excavators also found what they took to be chunks of coal deep inside the villa, and set them alight to illuminate their passage underground. Only when they noticed how many torches had solidified around an umbilicus -- a core of wood or bone to which the roll was attached -- did the true nature of the find become apparent. Here was a trove of ancient texts, carbonised by the heat surge of the eruption. About 1800 were eventually retrieved.

Scientists today are using the latest in advanced technology to actually READ some of these scrolls! They use multi-spectral imaging technology and are creating a variant on the CT Scan technology used to see inside people, to read the scrolls without unrolling them. Fucking amazing.