Earlier Times

When the 43,100+/- year old Divje Babe flute was found in Slovenia in 1995, many scientists, including taphonomist Francesco d'Errico and others, challenged the possibility that it could be a flute, never mind one crafted from a cave bear bone by Neanderthals to produce music. The long extinct Neanderthals being presently considered a separate species from what we are in the habit of calling people.

Why it would be anathema for a different species to produce actual music? Even the most cynical anthropocentric, tenure clutching anthropologist, when listening to recordings of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux - or the real thing, for that matter, would have to submit that birdsong is indeed song. This brings the conclusion that music existed before humans and that only the marketing of music can be claimed as a human-created activity, not music itself.

So, even though in the previous blog I called the playing of plucked and plecked instruments a profound human heritage, we have to admit that we are simply presently unaware of any other non-Homo sapiens playing similar instruments. What we do know is that the pressing down of strings with or without embedded or movable frets and the use of fingers, fingernails or plectrum(s) to make those strings vibrate sonorously is an extremely ancient activity.

Did these types of instruments evolve from harps or lyres? Maybe, but it is also possible that harp-like instruments evolved, at certain junctures or certain locales from perhaps the oud or something similar. This may be the case with the West African Kora. Interestingly, it is also possible that the Kora is the inspiration for the banjo - evolution turning back on itself. None-the-less, let’s not look at the evolution of these instruments or the associated music in historic linear terms, especially since what we think of as evolution is often de-evolution and what anthropologists consider the most primitive peoples are in actuality the living remnant of ancient, yet quite grand civilizations.

More to come…