When was music first made?

What is the oldest song you know? Maybe something by Elvis. Or a piece by Beethoven. Yet music is much older than that. So when was music first made?

Fossils?

‘What a great question!’ says Henkjan Honing enthusiastically. Henkjan is Professor of Music Cognition at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on what musicality is and whether animals other than humans are also musical. He even wrote a book about this topic: Aap slaat maat.

‘It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment music was first made,’ Henkjan explains. ‘That’s because few traces or remnants of very old music remain. There are no fossils of ancient songs, for example.’

‘But we’re not entirely in the dark,’ Henkjan goes on. ‘Thanks to ancient musical instruments. The oldest musical instrument we’ve found – a flute made from a vulture bone – dates back toroughly 45,000 years ago.’

Smart scales

The ancient flute has holes a lot like the ones in today’s recorders. That’s why researchers think the music that was played on it back then may have echoed melodies we would still recognise.

‘Ancient flutes use smart scales, which we still hear in today’s music,’ says Henkjan. ‘That would suggest those scales have a long history. So music itself is probably much older than those flutes.’

Answered by Rik Peters