This story was originally published on SAPIENS and appears here under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.
On South Africa’s southern coast, above the mouth of the Matjes River, a natural rock shelter nestles under a cliff face. The cave is only about three meters deep, and humans have used it for more than 10,000 years.
The place has a unique soundscape: The ocean’s shushing voice winds up a narrow gap in the rocks, and the shelter’s walls throb with the exhalation of water 45 meters below. When an easterly wind blows, it transforms the cave into a pair of rasping lungs.
It is possible that some 8,000 years ago, in this acoustically resonant haven, people not only hid from passing coastal thunderstorms, but may have used this place to commune with their dead—using music. That’s a possibility hinted at in the work of archaeologist Joshua Kumbani, of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and his colleagues.
Kumbani, with his adviser, archaeologist Sarah Wurz, believes they have identified an instrument that humans once used to make sound buried within a layer rich with human remains and bone, shell, and eggshell ornaments dating from between 9,600 and 5,400 years ago. This discovery is significant on many levels. “There could be a possibility that people used it for musical purposes or these artifacts were used during funerals when they buried their dead,” Kumbani hypothesizes.
The work offers the first scientific evidence of sound-producing artifacts in South Africa from the Stone Age, a period ending some 2,000 years ago with the introduction of metalworking. That “first” is somewhat surprising. Southern Africa has afforded archaeology a wealth of findings that speak to early human creativity. There is evidence, for example, that humans living 100,000 years ago in the region created little “paint factories” of ochre, bone, and grindstones that may have supplied artistic endeavors. Engraved objects found in the same site, dating back more than 70,000 years, hint at their creator’s symbolic thinking. Yet when it comes to music, the archaeological record has been mysteriously silent. “Music’s so common to all of us,” says Wurz, also at the University of the Witwatersrand. “It is fundamental.” It would be peculiar, then, if humans of bygone millennia had no music.
Instead, it’s possible that the musical instruments of South Africa have simply gone unnoticed. Part of the trouble is in identification. Determining whether something makes noise—and was deemed “musical” to its creators—is no small feat.
In addition, early archaeologists in this region used rudimentary techniques in numerous locations. Many archaeologists, Wurz argues, did their best with the approaches available at the time but simply did not consider the evidence for music in sites once inhabited by ancient humans. In short, they did not realize there could be a chorus of sound information trapped underground.
The oldest recognized musical instruments in the world are reminiscent of whistles or flutes. In Slovenia, for example, the “Neanderthal flute” may be at least 60,000 years old. Discovered in 1995 by Slovenian archaeologists, the item could have been created by Neanderthals, researchers believe. In Germany, scholars have unearthed bird bone flutes that a Homo sapiens’ hands could have crafted some 42,000 years ago.
Although some scientists have challenged the classification of these artifacts, many Westerners would readily recognize these objects as flute-like. They look very much like fragments from European woodwind instruments used today, complete with neatly punched finger holes.
In South Africa, archaeologists have discovered a number of bone tubes at Stone Age sites, but, as these objects lack finger holes, researchers have labeled the artifacts as beads or pendants. Kumbani thinks that these items could have produced sound—but identifying a possible instrument is difficult. Modern music scholars, after all, will point out that various cultures have widely different concepts of what sounds harmonic, melodious, or musical.
Music itself “is a modern, Western term,” argues Rupert Till, a professor of music at the University of Huddersfield in the United Kingdom. “There are some traditional communities and languages that really don’t have a separate concept of music. … It is mixed up with dance, meaning, ceremony.”
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