Credited to Slovenia. Whether the object is a made instrument is contested. Its finder first allowed that carnivore teeth could have pierced the bone. The National Museum of Slovenia holds that later analyses rule this out.
How it began
The object was found in 1995 in the Divje babe cave near Cerkno, in present-day Slovenia, during systematic excavations led by Ivan Turk. The cave lies 230 meters above the Idrijca River and was a den of cave bears that Neanderthals also visited in the last glacial period. The bone lay close to a hearth, in a layer deposited about 60,000 to 50,000 years ago that also held Neanderthal stone tools. The layer was dated by electron spin resonance on bear teeth.
How it works
The flute is an 11.4 centimeter piece of the left thighbone of a young cave bear with four pierced holes, two fully preserved and two partly. Experiments with replicas of tools found in the cave showed how the holes could be made: a pointed stone tool carved a small hollow, and a bone punch pierced it. According to the museum, the top has a deliberately sharpened edge that serves as a mouthpiece, and a reconstruction can play a wide range of melodies.
Who pushed back
The interpretation was contested from the start. When the bone was found, Turk himself proposed that it was either a musical instrument or a bone gnawed and pierced by animal teeth, and he favored the first reading. The National Museum of Slovenia maintains that evidence Turk presented in 2005, together with later analyses and experiments, rules out animal bites or coincidence as the cause of the holes.
What lasted
If the museum's reading is right, the flute is about 20,000 years older than other known flutes, which were made by anatomically modern humans, and at least 10,000 years older than the earliest wind instruments from caves in Germany. The museum presents it as the best evidence so far that Neanderthals made music, which challenges older views of Neanderthals as primitive hominids.
Where it stands today
The flute is on display in the permanent exhibition of the National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana. Musician Ljuben Dimkaroski built a playable reconstruction, called the tidldibab, and recorded music on it. The find site can be visited through guided tours of the Divje Babe archaeological park near Cerkno.
