The World's Oldest Instrument

By: Greg Schmalzel

How old is music? Before it was recorded in modern studios or written on staves, music manifested itself in the lives of ancient humans. A low hum in the distance. The patterned beat of a woodpecker. The melodic flow of a primitive conversation. Early humans would have experienced all of these sonic landscapes and surely took note of them. 

We don’t know when it began precisely, but it seems that music has deeper roots in our species than we could’ve ever imagined - and perhaps even predates our species. In its earliest forms, it was probably wordless, instinctive, and rose from the natural rhythms of our breath and heartbeats.

Through the ages, it developed into what it is today. An Art. A defining feature of human culture. A multibillion dollar industry with countless genres.  And yet, for all its significance, music leaves very little behind in terms of prehistoric archaeological evidence. We only find the faintest of traces if we’re really really lucky.

In 1995, in a cave tucked into the hills of central Europe, such a fragment was found. It was crude, perhaps, but astonishingly old - so old that it changes how we understand not just music… but ourselves.

This is the world’s oldest instrument

Watch the full YouTube video HERE.

The Neanderthal Flute

In a Slovenian cave called Divje Babe — “Wild Woman’s Cave” — archaeologists unearthed something remarkable: a juvenile cave bear femur, broken at both ends and pierced with a series of holes. At first glance, it looked like refuse from an Ice Age kill site. But closer inspection revealed something unusual: the holes were circular, clean, and evenly spaced in a straight line. Too deliberate to be random.

Ivan Turk, the archaeologist leading the dig, proposed a bold idea: this wasn’t just bone — it was a flute. If true, it would be the oldest musical instrument ever found, dating back around 50,000 years. That’s long before Homo sapiens arrived in the region. Meaning it would have been made by Neanderthals.

The claim sparked both excitement and skepticism. If Neanderthals were making music, it would challenge long-held assumptions about their cognitive abilities — suggesting symbolic thought and a capacity for art.

But critics weren’t convinced. They argued the holes could be bite marks from carnivores like hyenas, known to crush and puncture bones. Experimental studies even showed that animal teeth can leave similar marks, especially in dry bone.

To investigate further, researchers created replicas of the artifact. And when played, these reconstructions could produce clear, musical tones. Notes — not noise. Was it real music, or just a happy accident?

No other flutes from the Neanderthal era have been found, leaving this artifact an enigma — compelling but inconclusive. Still, the debate itself reveals something powerful: our deep desire to connect with our ancient ancestors, to imagine them not just surviving, but singing.

Whether or not Neanderthals made music, this single bone challenges us to listen closer to the past — and consider that the origins of music may be far older, and more complex, than we once thought.

The Biological Origins of Music

If the Neanderthal bone flute is real, it raises a powerful question: why make music at all? What evolutionary purpose could it serve?

Music is universal across human cultures, appearing in every society ever documented. This consistency suggests that music isn't just decorative — it might be biologically ingrained. Some scientists propose that music evolved as a kind of social glue, helping to coordinate group activities, soothe infants, or signal identity. Others suggest it may have developed alongside language, training our brains to recognize patterns, tone, and rhythm.

And it’s not just humans. Many animals engage in behaviors that resemble music: birdsong, whale song, chest-beating in gorillas. These forms of rhythmic and melodic expression suggest that the roots of music lie deep in our evolutionary past.

Even in nature, rhythm and pitch are everywhere — the sway of trees, the crash of waves, the shifting of seasons. Organisms that can detect and respond to these patterns often have an evolutionary advantage. Orangutans, for example, use the sway of tree branches to move efficiently through the canopy. Chimpanzees even show a preference for traditional music over silence.

Some researchers believe early humans evolved to detect patterns — whether in prey movements or seasonal shifts. Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins once described hunter-gatherer life as marked by a "Paleolithic rhythm" — a natural flow between activity and rest.

Others, like evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, argue that music (and the arts in general) evolved through sexual selection. Like the bowerbird’s elaborate mating displays, music might signal intelligence, creativity, and vitality to potential mates.

Whether it was to impress, soothe, or simply play, the act of carving a flute into a cave bear bone suggests something remarkable: a capacity for beauty, expression, and perhaps even love — in a species long thought incapable of such things.

The Future of Music

We shouldn’t underestimate the intelligence or creativity of Neanderthals—or be too quick to dismiss the so-called “flute” as just a chewed-up cave bear bone. If it is a musical instrument, it marks a turning point in our evolutionary story: when music began to evolve not just biologically, but culturally.

Like genes, music is passed down and reshaped through generations. People remember certain rhythms or melodies because they work—they resonate, literally and figuratively. In this way, music is subject to cultural selection. Just as DNA mutates, so do musical forms: a new scale here, a new instrument there. And the “mutations” that catch on survive.

A 2022 study comparing British, American, and Japanese folk songs found that melodies evolve in patterned, predictable ways—much like genes or languages. Notes that serve strong rhythmic roles are more stable. Insertions and deletions are common, while substitutions usually happen between similar notes. Even in creative fields, evolution leaves fingerprints.

But unlike biology, culture evolves at lightning speed. Our bodies haven’t changed much in 300,000 years—but music has transformed drastically in just 50,000. From bone flutes to electronic beats, and now AI-generated compositions, we’ve come a long way. Jim Morrison foresaw this shift in the '60s, predicting a solo musician using machines to create entire performances—an eerily accurate vision of digital music production today.

So where are we headed next? With tools like brain-computer interfaces, synthetic sound design, and immersive virtual stages, music might soon transcend anything recognizable. Will it become more human—or less? More primal—or entirely post-human?

No one really knows. But that’s part of the beauty of it.

Where do you think music is going next?

Sources:

[1] Turk, M, et al. 2020. “The Neanderthal Musical Instrument from Divje Babe I Cave (Slovenia): A Critical Review of the Discussion.” Applied Sciences 10(4):1226.

[2] D’Errico, F., et al. 1998. “A Middle Palaeolithic origin of music? Using cave-bear bone accumulations to assess the Divje Babe I bone ‘flute.’” Antiquity 72(275):65-79.

[3] Morley, I. 2006. “Mousterian musicianship? The case of the Dive Babe I bone.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 25(4):317-333.

[4] Diedrich, CG. 2015. “‘Neanderthal bone flutes’: simply products of Ice Age spotted hyena scavenging activities on cave bear cubs in European cave bear dens.” R Soc Open Sci 2(4):140022.

[5] Wang, T. 2015. “A hypothesis on the biological origins and social evolution of music and dance.” Frontiers in Neuroscience 18;9:30.

[6] Thorpe. S, et al. 2007. “Orangutans use compliant branches to lower the energetic cost of locomotion.” Biology Letters 3(3):253-6.

[7] Cant, J. 1994. “Positional behaviour of arboreal primates and habitat compliance.” In Current primatology. vol. 1. Ecology and evolution (eds B. Thierry, T. R. Anderson, J. J. Roeder & N. Herrenschmidt), pp. 187–193. Strasbourg, France: Universite Louis Pasteu.

[8] Sahlins, Marshall. 1972. Stone Age Economics. Chicago, IL: Aldine·Atherton, INC.

[9] Mingle ME, et al. 2014. “Chimpanzees prefer African and Indian music over silence.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition 40(4):502-5.

[10] Dr. Erich Jarvis: The Neuroscience of Speech, Language & Music | Huberman Lab Podcast #87

[11] Miller, Geoffrey. 2000. “Evolution of human music through sexual selection.” In N. L. Wallin, B. Merker, & S. Brown (Eds.), The origins of music (pp. 329-360). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[12] Savage, P., et al. 2022. “Sequence alignment of folk song melodies reveals cross-cultural regularities of musical evolution.” Current Biology 32(6):1395-1402