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blackadder1620 t1_je3nvnn wrote

Reply to comment by hillo538 in TIL The oldest musical instrument in the world, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute, is made from the left thighbone of a young cave bear. by gonejahman

oldest found. good chance we did the same things if not a little more extra. although their cave paintings are pretty damn cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux

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jagnew78 t1_je4tgr1 wrote

if you see the complexity of that it's hard not to imagine there are older, even more simple versions of this from before hand. Someone probable started with a hollow bone after sucking the marrow out after a meal and was just probably fooling around with it and blew into it for fun and it made a cool sound.

Then who knows how long... generations later someone, somewhere down the road realized if you covered your hand over one end you could make it change sound and then at some point, generations more later someone figured out you could drill holes into it and cover or uncover them and create even more sound variations.

this is an evolution of an instrument refined over generations.

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LiesInRuins t1_je4z2pf wrote

It could have even happened in the same weekend. One particularly curious cave monkey with an inventive mind could’ve conjured this up in a day and then get beaten to death for it and the next cave monkey could’ve showed it to some friends.

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