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Prehistoric Instruments May Have Been Stone
Sept. 8 -- The sound is like a gentle rain of quick, high-pitched notes, accented by an occasional “ping.” It’s played from an unlikely source and scientists believe it could be a model of man’s earliest music.
“We took the strategy of taking what materials preserve well — stone tools — and then we asked, ‘could they make suitable instruments?’ ” says Frank Cowan, the assistant curator of archaeology at the Cincinnati Museum Center who fashioned the stone instruments. “The answer is yes.”
Scientists have long pondered how early our ancient ancestors began creating music. Flutes, crafted from vulture-wing bones about 36,000 years ago in France, are the earliest confirmed instruments. In 1996 scientists claimed they had found an even older flute, made from bear bone, in a site that our ancestral cousins, Neanderthals, inhabited 43,000 years ago. But researchers have since argued an animal’s chewing teeth created the bone’s holes, not a prehistoric musician.
The problem is, materials that might have made the best ancient instruments, like bone, canvas and wood, don’t preserve well. Stone, on the other hand, preserves very well. Stone tools date as far back as 2.5 million years. Could prehistoric people have played their stone tools as instruments? To find out, the team of scientists decided they had to try themselves.
The Ring of Clicking Flint
Under the guidance of University of Buffalo archaeologist Ezra Zubrow and University of Cambridge musicologist Ian Cross, Cowan crafted about 100 stone instruments. He struck flakes of flint from the core of a large rock and chipped them into mostly long and narrow shapes. Then he tailored each piece, adding a curve here or a sharp edge there.
The stone tools were then presented to a group of musicians from the University of Cambridge who played them by clicking one stone against another. Because flint, which is a variety of quartz, has many glass-like qualities, striking the stones together created sounds with a slight ring. But, just as different violins or pianos produce different quality sounds, so did the stone flakes.
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