That bone flute from Hohle Fels is 40,000 years old and people keep calling it a 'tool' | Archaeology Discoveries - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
That bone flute from Hohle Fels is 40,000 years old and people keep calling it a 'tool'
I saw a post last week calling the Hohle Fels flute a simple hunting tool, and I have to push back. It has five holes and was carved from a griffon vulture wing bone with stone tools, which means someone in Swabia sat down and thought about music before they thought about farming. Calling it a tool misses the point, it is evidence of abstract thought and social life way earlier than a lot of textbooks admit. If you have read the 2009 Conard paper, what do you make of the reconstruction debates?