Neanderthals inhabited much of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia from about 100,000 to 35,000 years ago. Their name derives from the discovery in 1856 of skeletal remains in a cave in Germany's Neanderthal Valley.
Neanderthals had short, stocky, powerful bodies. However, they walked upright and had multifunctional hands that were similar to those of modern humans. Their brain size actually equaled or surpassed that of modern people. Neanderthals used fire, made stone tools and wooden hunting spears, buried their dead, and tried to heal their sick or injured. Most scholars believe that Neanderthals used language and practiced some type of religion.
In 1995 researchers excavating a cave in Slovenia found stone implements characteristic of Neanderthals. Amid those artifacts was a piece of a juvenile cave bear's thighbone that contains four artificial holes in a straight line and resembles a flute. Neanderthals probably used a carnivore tooth as a punch to produce the holes, which go through only one side of the shaft (like a modern flute). The ends of the hollow bone artifact, which is between four and five inches long, are broken off, possibly gnawed off by cave bears or other animals.
Similar flutes, made from the bones of various animals, have been discovered at Homo sapiens (human) sites dating from 35,000 to 22,000 years ago. The cave-bear flute, however, is about 82,000 to 43,000 years old and is clearly a Neanderthal creation. It is the oldest firmly dated musical instrument.
Using a reconstruction of the bone flute, researchers have been able to blow into the end of the instrument (playing it much like a modern recorder, a member of the flute family) and finger the holes in various ways to produce musical tones. The pitches and the intervals between them do not correspond to any modern music system, but they do reflect a basic feature of modern music--the use of technology to construct instruments that produce sounds for some thought-out purpose.
But what was that purpose? Neanderthals may have played the bone flute to enjoy the sounds, to attract mates, to lure birds or other animals during hunting, or to accompany religious ceremonies (the "singing bone" representing the voice and therefore the mystical essence of one of the animals--i.e., natural forces--on whose goodwill the Neanderthals depended for continued life).
The instrument itself, of course, cannot convey the motivation behind its construction. However, the bone flute does reveal humanlike behavior and intelligence among the Neanderthals.
(Principal sources: Music of the Universe, http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/darryllyman; "Neandertal Noisemaker,"Science News, Nov. 23, 1996, p. 328; Tim Folger and Shanti Menon, "...Or Much like Us?" Discover, Jan. 1997, p. 33)
