Ice Age Flutes of Swabia: The Oldest Musical Instruments

The Ice Age flutes of Swabia are the oldest securely identified musical instruments in the world. Carved from bird bone and mammoth ivory about 42,000-40,000 years ago, they were found in caves in the Swabian Jura of south-western Germany, chiefly Geissenklösterle and Hohle Fels. They show that music was part of life for the first modern humans in Europe.

The caves and their people

The Swabian Jura is a limestone upland south of Stuttgart and west of Ulm. Two small valleys, the Ach and the Lone, contain caves that were used by people of the Aurignacian culture, the earliest Homo sapiens population of central Europe, from around 43,000 years ago.

These caves have produced an extraordinary concentration of early art: small carved ivory animals, the Lion Man and the Venus of Hohle Fels. In 2017 six of them, including Geissenklösterle and Hohle Fels, were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as “Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura”.

The Geissenklösterle flutes

Geissenklösterle is a small cave in the Ach valley near Blaubeuren, excavated by Joachim Hahn from the 1970s. In 1990 his team recovered a flute made from the wing bone of a swan, 12.6 cm long in its surviving form with three finger holes.

Later study of ivory fragments from the site identified a second flute made of mammoth ivory, reconstructed from 31 pieces and published in 2004 by Nicholas Conard and colleagues. Radiocarbon dates published in 2012 placed the Aurignacian layers at Geissenklösterle at roughly 42,000-43,000 years ago, making these flutes among the oldest instruments known.

The Hohle Fels flute

Hohle Fels near Schelklingen, also in the Ach valley, is a large cave excavated by a team from the University of Tübingen led by Conard. In 2008 the excavators found twelve fragments of a flute in the lowest Aurignacian layer, close to where the Venus of Hohle Fels was found that same year.

Reassembled, the flute is 21.8 cm long and about 8 mm wide, made from the radius (a wing bone) of a griffon vulture. It has five finger holes and two deep V-shaped notches at one end, which probably formed the mouthpiece. Fragments of ivory flutes were also recovered at Hohle Fels and at Vogelherd in the Lone valley. The finds were published in the journal Nature in June 2009.

How they were made and played

A bird-bone flute required relatively simple steps: cutting off the ends of a hollow bone, carving a notch for blowing and drilling or cutting finger holes, which on the Hohle Fels flute were carefully thinned before piercing.

Ivory flutes were far more demanding. Mammoth tusk is solid, so the maker had to split a curved section lengthways, hollow out both halves, cut the holes and then rejoin the halves, probably with an adhesive and a binding, to make an airtight tube. This implies planning, skill and a clear idea of the finished sound.

Replicas made by experimental archaeologists produce a range of clear notes, and the spacing of the holes suggests that players could produce several different pitches. The exact music they played is, of course, unknown.

Later Ice Age flutes

The Swabian finds were not isolated. Bird-bone pipes and flutes are known from many later Upper Palaeolithic sites in Europe, most notably Isturitz in the French Basque Country, where a series of bird-bone pipes spans thousands of years. This suggests that wind instruments remained part of life throughout the Ice Age.

The fragility of the material means that only a tiny fraction of the instruments ever made has survived. Flutes of wood or reed, which would have been easier to make, almost never preserve, so the bone and ivory examples are probably the durable tip of a much larger musical culture.

Myths and facts

• Myth: the Neanderthals made the first flute. A perforated cave-bear bone from Divje Babe in Slovenia has been called a Neanderthal flute, but many specialists think the holes were made by gnawing carnivores. The Swabian flutes are the earliest undisputed examples.
• Myth: music began with these flutes. Singing, clapping and drums of wood or skin would leave no trace. The flutes show an already developed musical tradition, not its beginning.

Timeline

• c. 43,000-42,000 years ago: Aurignacian people settle in the caves of the Swabian Jura.
• c. 42,000-40,000 years ago: The Geissenklösterle and Hohle Fels flutes are made.
• 1990: The Geissenklösterle swan-bone flute is found.
• 2004: The Geissenklösterle ivory flute is published.
• 2008: The Hohle Fels vulture-bone flute is excavated.
• 2009, June: The Hohle Fels flute is published in Nature.
• 2017, July: The caves become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

The Swabian flutes show that, soon after arriving in Europe, Homo sapiens were investing time and skill in making music. Some researchers suggest music may have helped strengthen social bonds among small, scattered groups, giving them an advantage over the Neanderthals who lived in Europe before them, though this idea is difficult to test.