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A 2,000-year-old
bone flute
19 cm long
People have made musical instruments
for tens of thousands of years. Recently, German archaeologists
discovered a mammoth ivory flute in a site dated to
more than 30,000 years ago.
Flutes and whistles created from
the wing bones of large birds are common across the
Americas. In Arizona, the Anasazi made theirs from
eagle wing bones. In Maine, Native people used the
wings of whistling swans, like the one featured here,
to make flutes.
This flute was found at a
large shell midden site in upper Frenchman Bay. Abbe
Museum archaeologists excavated the site in the 1930s.
The site contains stratigraphic layers going back
at least 4,500 years ago and continuing to the time
of European contact. We’re not sure how old
this flute is, but it is nearly identical to others
found in sites that date from the Ceramic Period,
between 2,100 and 1,200 years ago.
Drawing from Three
Shell Heaps on Frenchman's Bay
by Wendell S. Hadlock, 1941. Bulletin 6, Robert Abbe
Museum.
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