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.
This drawing is from Three Shell Heaps on Frenchman's Bay by Wendell S. Hadlock, 1941. Bulletin 6, Robert Abbe Museum.