In 1995, archaeologists digging in a cave called Divje Babe in Slovenia found a strange piece of bone. It had four holes lined up neatly along one side. After years of arguing, scientists agreed: it was a flute, around 60,000 years old. It is the oldest musical instrument ever discovered.
What’s even more astonishing is who probably made it. At that time, only Neanderthals lived in Europe, not modern humans like us. So the flute is evidence that Neanderthals weren’t grunting cave-dwellers, as old stories suggested. They were sitting around fires, drilling holes in bones, and playing music.
Musicians have built copies of the flute and learned to play them. The sound is breathy and soft, like a wooden recorder. Strangely, the spacing of the holes can produce the same musical scale used in songs today. The Neanderthals seem to have invented a tune system that humans rediscovered tens of thousands of years later.
