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OdnamNool
Jul-19-2005, 7:15am
What is the oldest known civilization? And what were they doing, musically? Or, is this a dumb question? Probably... but I'm curious...

John Flynn
Jul-19-2005, 7:35am
Let me stress I am no expert here, but I have done a little study on this. I hope others will correct me where I am wrong.

What I think I understand about this is that what are now termed civilizations first appeared in Asia and North Africa about 10,000 BC. The first musical instruments were formerly weapons (or at least that was a theory my college antro. prof. was writing a book on). Clubs became percussion instruments, bows and arrows became string instruments and blowguns became wind instruments. Early music was probably just a cacophony of noise-making, a lot like some jams I have been to! Eventually, melodies an rhythms emerged. We really don't know what they sounded like. I believe the earliest music we can re-create accurately comes from about 1000 AD.

mandocrucian
Jul-19-2005, 7:43am
Neanderthal flute (http://www.greenwych.ca/fl-compl.htm)

Neanderthal Jam (http://whyfiles.org/114music/4.html)

OdnamNool
Jul-19-2005, 7:50am
I saw your name on the board, there, M'Johnny, and... somehow I knew you'd have an answer. Sure enuff.

"Bows and arrows became stringed instruments." GOOD ONE! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

OdnamNool
Jul-19-2005, 8:05am
WOW! M'Crucian! Seriously???

John Zimm
Jul-19-2005, 8:28am
I don't know if I buy that theory completely-the banjo is still a weapon of great power.

OdnamNool
Jul-19-2005, 9:46am
Which theory? Humph. I'm getting discouraged, here. Finally I show some seriously... and... ur.... Harumph. Maybe it's simply that nobody knows??? (Except maybe M'Crucian)??? It would be better to have a reply with words... rather than a "link."

Jim Garber
Jul-19-2005, 9:54am
Which theory? #Humph. #I'm getting discouraged, here. Finally I show some seriously... and... ur.... #Harumph. #Maybe it's simply that nobody knows??? #(Except maybe M'Crucian)??? #It would be better to have a reply with words... rather than a "link."

You could learn a lot from old musical instruments. We're not talking about a pawnshop full of rusted saxophones and busted guitars, but about partly fossilized bones with holes that look suspiciously like wind instruments.

We're talking Neanderthal flute -- circa 50,000 BC.

Why get discouraged? Read the articles that Mandocrucian linked to. 50,000 BC seems pretty old to me. I think that bone flute may be the oldest existing instrument, tho it would be difficult to tell if a rock were used for percusssion or to bop something over the head (or both) -- jflynnstl's comments...

Jim

OdnamNool
Jul-19-2005, 10:22am
Okay. Where is/was "Slovinia?"

otterly2k
Jul-19-2005, 10:28am
Not a dumb question...those bone flutes look a lot like more recent ocarinas, which are quite nice instruments. Of course, percussion too-- banging on old hollow logs, stretching skins over hoops, etc. is ancient, though I don't know enough about it to offer dates.

I'd like to know more about the theory that weapons were transformed into instruments ... I suspect that some instruments (e.g. drums, rattles, etc.) came first... but there is clearly transferred technology ...several early string instruments (including ones still played) seem to be related to bows. Witness the berimbau.

csstanley
Jul-19-2005, 10:31am
I don't want to send this another route but I find it hard to accept Carbon dating that far back when it's been known that they've dated a modern day earth worm back 10,000 years.

In religious studies, it's been known that as long as man has been on earth, music has been a basic part of society. Or rather the family unit.

The basic proponent of society in communication in ancient times was through music. Rather than telephones and computers, they had music to communicate at far distances.

and if you do a complete study on life in general for mankind, you'll find that the consensus dates around 7,000 to 10,000 years ago that man started a lot of what we have today. Metalurgy, agrarian, music, and many other arts that we have today.

otterly2k
Jul-19-2005, 10:37am
Actually, come to think of it, human voice was probably the first "instrument"... but would not have left artifacts for us to try to figure out.

There is mention in some of the earliest written records available of drums, lyres, flutes, and horns (animal horns...preceding trumpet-like things). But as to what preceded that, we rely on archaeological evidence.

OdnamNool
Jul-19-2005, 10:54am
(whoops.) #I apologise to M'Johnny. #MandoJohnny, I thought you were being sarcastic, but... apparently it's true!?!!?? #Weapons morphed to instruments??? #I'm shocked!

Tim
Jul-19-2005, 11:00am
I don't want to send this another route but I find it hard to accept Carbon dating that far back when it's been known that they've dated a modern day earth worm back 10,000 years.
Do you have any reference for that? #Sounds like one of those stories that circulate and no one can provide any valid sources.

arbarnhart
Jul-19-2005, 11:04am
(whoops.) #I apologise to M'Johnny. #MandoJohnny, I thought you were being sarcastic, but... apparently it's true!?!!?? #Weapons morphed to instruments??? #I'm shocked!

There have certainly been many documented cases of instruments morphing into weapons (some accuse me of that every time I play) #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif

OdnamNool
Jul-19-2005, 11:15am
Huh? Ya got that backwards abarnhart! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

csstanley
Jul-19-2005, 11:34am
Tim, I'll look and see if I can find that for ya. But the basic premises is that noone really knows for sure because a part of science is to be able to test and prove. This CAN'T do that.

It is a theory at best. Your going on the opinion of the one making the guess.

This isn't the worm but here:

Scientists have dated lava rock samples from various active volcanoes with the radiometric method. Because the formation of these rocks has recently been observed, radiometric dating should not give them an age of millions of years.[72] Yet there are many such examples. Consider the following:

* Rock which was formed in 1986 from a lava dome at Mount St. Helens volcano was dated by the potassiumargon method as 0.35 ± 0.05 million years old.[73]

* Rocks from five recent lava flows at Mount Ngauruhoe in New Zealand were dated using the potassium-argon method, and resulted in dates ranging from <0.27 to 3.5 million years — but one lava flow occurred in 1949, three in 1954, and one in 1975.[74]

* Salt Lake Crater on Oahu was determined to be 92–147 million years, 140–680 million years, 930–1,580 million years, 1,230–1,960 million years, 1,290–2,050 million years, and 1,360–1,900 years old, using different radiometric dating methods.[75]

* How did 1,000-year-old carbon-dated trees in the Auckland volcanic field of New Zealand get buried under 145,000-465,000 year old potassium-argon-dated lava rock?[76]
References:
[72] Radiometric “clocks” begin keeping time only after molten rock solidifies; i.e., radiometric dating should reveal the age of the rock from the time it hardened until the moment of dating.
[73] "Excess argon within mineral concentrates from the new dacite lava dome at Mount St Helens volcano," CEN Technical Journal, 10(3), 1996, http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v10/i3/argon.asp
[74] This and many other examples published in scientific literature are documented in A.A. Snelling, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, 1998, p.503–525. See also “Radioactive ‘Dating’ Failure,” by Andrew Snelling, http:/www.answersingenesis.org/home/ area/magazines/docs/cenv22n1_dating_failure.asp#f5
[75] J.G. Funkenhouser & John J. Naughton, “Radiogenic Helium and Argon in Ultramafic Inclusions from Hawaii,” Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 73, no.14, p. 4602.
[76] Ian McDougall, H.A. Polach, J.J. Stipp, “Excess Radiogenic Argon in Young Subaerial Basalts from the Auckland Volcanic Field, New Zealand,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 33, p. 1485.

Basic premises here is: Don't take one man's ideas as the gospel and study for yourself.

csstanley
Jul-19-2005, 11:55am
I was doing some looking on the internet and came across this: Oldest Musical instrument in the world. (http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/1999/bnlpr092299.html)

Tim
Jul-19-2005, 11:59am
Thank you.

billkilpatrick
Jul-19-2005, 4:57pm
one of the reasons history is so mysterioius is because people simply forget.

take this, for example ... it was posted on the lute list; comes from europe but i can't remember where or when it was found but it is ancient and it is plucky:

arbarnhart
Jul-21-2005, 8:31am
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/uploads/post-12-39853-evolution.jpg

John Flynn
Jul-21-2005, 9:02am
OdnamNool:

Yes, for once I was being quite serious! I really did have a college anthro. prof. who was writing a book on this theory. I mean, it makes sense. Weapons are some of the earliest implements, tools, whatever you want to call them, that early man developed, because that was what he needed for survival. It makes sense that after the hunt, or the battle, he would be celebrating around the campfire and would start makin' some noise with his bow, his club or his blowgun and would figure out that there were some neat sounds you could make with it.

billkilpatrick
Jul-21-2005, 9:24am
one of the reasons the spanish did so well in south america was the "stuff" they carried with them; horses, gunpowder, measles ... plucky little chordaphone instruments - all of which were unknown to the people living there. in south america they call the charango "theirs" but it came from europe.

anthropologically speaking, i wonder if stay-at-home, farming civilizations with a knowledge of the bow and arrow were more likely to develop the technology into musical instruments than their nomadic counterparts.

Arto
Jul-21-2005, 10:22am
First: I´m no historian, paleontologist nor scientist. So I do not claim to know about scientific facts.

"Yes, for once I was being quite serious! I really did have a college anthro. prof. who was writing a book on this theory. I mean, it makes sense. Weapons are some of the earliest implements, tools, whatever you want to call them, that early man developed, because that was what he needed for survival. It makes sense that after the hunt, or the battle, he would be celebrating around the campfire and would start makin' some noise with his bow, his club or his blowgun and would figure out that there were some neat sounds you could make with it."

This is interesting and makes very much sense to me when it comes to string instruments. I think it is pretty safe to think that a bow is the original string instrument - you can make a nice sound by plucking the string, and it would be a small wonder if some early hunter did not put this in use, also music-wise.

This seems much more debatable to me about other instruments. You can make a nice percussion instrument of a hollow log - you don´t need any weapon to start with. And you can make a primitive flute of a hollow bone. You can start from the remains of your prey, not from the weapon that got you that prey.

The story of the 50 000 BC (or whatever, but old it is) Neanderthal flute is utterly fascinating. If this is a Neanderthal relic, it tells interesting things about the Neanderthals. The general idea seems to be that they were pretty concrete people in there minds - though they seem to have believed in some kind of afterlife, because they put everyday articles (and flowers! pollen has been detected) in their graves. The Neanderthals did not produce cave paintings, their weapons are primitive and utilitarian (there is sometimes some crude ornamenting in very late Neanderthal articles, but it has been hypothesized that this may have been copied from early modern humans, who were already living in Europe at that time). The idea of Neanderthals having already enough interest and capasity in music to produce primitive flutes with several holes, tells a lot about these early cousins of ours and their minds. Maybe it tells something about the power of sound and music in every human being.

Arto

John Flynn
Jul-21-2005, 11:52am
[/QUOTE]You can make a nice percussion instrument of a hollow log - you don´t need any weapon to start with.[QUOTE]

I am not championing this "weapons" theory as much as I am just reporting it. I thought that professor who was researching it was a bit full of it, quite frankly. But the theory is interesting and he did have creditials in that field of study, so I can't fully discount it. It makes more sense to me than not.

That prof. would say that you still have to hit the hollow log with something substantial and that's a club. As the opening scene in the movie "2001: A Space Odyessy" illustrated, the whole act of hitting something with a stick or bone or club was originally a martial behavior. The music stuff more likely came later. As you pointed out though, the weakest part of the theory is probably the wind instruments. That could have had many origins.

I am formulating my own theory on the existence of Neanderthal banjo players. A couple of 'em showed up at my last jam!
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

Arto
Jul-21-2005, 3:21pm
one of the reasons history is so mysterioius is because people simply forget.

take this, for example ... it was posted on the lute list; comes from europe but i can't remember where or when it was found but it is ancient and it is plucky:



This did disturb me a lot - I have seen somewhere an article about this... Didn´t find that, but found googling the following article (sorry, in German):

http://www.theiss.de/AiD/2002/6/europa1.php

The link does not contain information about how old this medieval find is, but somehow I remember that it would be from 14th or 15th century AD. In any case, it was excavated near Gdansk/Danzig in Poland. Perhaps the earliest example of extant "proto-mandolin" we have? (I suppose there is older pictorial evidence.) In any case, an instrument usually named guittern, gittern, quinterne etc.

Arto