Excavations by the University of Tübingen at Geißenklösterle Cave near the town of Blaubeuren in the Swabian Jura have produced a new musical instrument that dates to well over 30,000 years ago. The find is a flute that was carefully carved from mammoth ivory and documents the oldest musical tradition known worldwide. Nicholas Conard, the director of the research team, and colleagues report on this discovery in the current issue of the Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt.

The ivory flute was discovered this year in connection with the detailed analysis of countless small fragments of carved mammoth ivory from Geißenklösterle. Thirty-one pieces of carved ivory have been assembled to form a flute with at least three finger-holes and a length of 18.7 cm. Together with two previously identified bird bone flutes from the same deposit, Geißenklösterle has produced the three oldest musical instruments known, and these finds demonstrates that origins of music can be traced back to the European Ice Age over 30,000 years ago.

The highly fragmented ivory flute lay at the base of the upper Aurignacian deposits at the site and is perhaps the oldest of the three instruments. The Aurignacian is the first cultural group of the Upper Paleolithic and dates to the period in which both the last Neanderthals and the first modern humans occupied Europe. These deposits at Geißenklösterle have produced 16 radiocarbon dates ranging between 30,000 and 36,000 years ago. Another dating method, thermoluminescence, has yielded two dates of ca. 37,000 years ago. The three flutes from Geißenklösterle are considerably older than any other musical instruments known and demonstrate that music played an important role in the lives of our Ice Age ancestors.

The technology used to carve a flute from solid mammoth ivory goes well beyond that used to produce a flute from hollow bird bones. The ivory flute was carefully carved in two separate halves that were subsequently bound and glued together along a perfectly prepared, air-tight seam.

The Aurignacian inhabitants of the Swabian Jura were adept artisans, who also produced many of the earliest examples of figurative art known. These small ivory figurines stem from Geißenklösterle and three other sites in the region. Yet Geißenklösterle is the only site to produce musical instruments. The remarkable finds from the caves of the Swabian Jura point to the region as one of the key areas of cultural innovation at the start of the Upper Paleolithic. These finds play an important role in the global discussion of the origins of cultural modernity, and demonstrate that no later than 35,000 years ago the inhabitants of the European Ice Age were culturally as sophisticated as recent and sub-recent populations and thus behaviorally modern.

Experiments by Friedrich Seeberger, a leading researcher of prehistoric music and one of the authors of the report, conclusively demonstrate that varied and aesthetically pleasing music can be produced from these musical instruments. While the researchers do not know specifically what melodies Paleolithic musicians played, the range of notes and the possible combinations of tones can be simulated by Seeberger on modern reconstructions of the Aurignacian flutes.

Following the press conference on Thursday, December 16, at the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology in the Castle in Tübingen, the new flute will join the bird bone flutes from Geißenklösterle in a special exhibit on Ice Age music in the Württembergisches Landesmuseum in Stuttgart.

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