Quote Originally Posted by (billkilpatrick @ July 19 2005, 17:57)
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... Didnīt 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