source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 05:57:18 -0700 Subject: Re: Scale of Neanderthal flute From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison) >The Ethnomusicology Research Digest just posted information about the >world's oldest known musical instrument, a 43,000-82,000 year old bone >flute. Thanks Bill, for posting this. The web page is also very interesting. I haven't read the entire article yet, but at first blush, there is one thing about this however that strikes me as iffy: This apparent flute's embouchure hole (the hole you blow across) has been destroyed, so it's very difficult to be sure of its length. That not being known, it would be impossible to tell what tuning it plays. One other nitpicky thing: Calling it between 43,000 and 82,000 years old is a kind of weird way to treat numerical precision. If you're not sure how many TENS of thousands of years old the thing is, then how many individual thousands on top of that is irrelevant. But that's a minor question. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 6 Apr 1997 19:37 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA00390; Sun, 6 Apr 1997 19:37:42 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA00388 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id KAA03741; Sun, 6 Apr 1997 10:36:01 -0700 Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 10:36:01 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu