Archaeological researchers have discovered flutes made from the bones of ancient birds in Eynan-Mallaha in Israel that date back some 12,000 years. The bones were found during an ongoing dig at a site in Northern Israel known as a kind of crossroads for more than 500 million birds migrating between Europe and Africa.
The site is located in the Hula Lake Basin of the Upper Jordan Valley, an area that is known to contain many relics of the ancient Natufian culture. More than a thousand bird bones have been excavated from the site, and the new study comes from a re-evaluation of those relics.
The international team of researchers, representing a number of institutions, including the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, and Department of Forensic Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, among others, published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports/Nature in June 2023.
Why it’s significant
The ancient bones came from Eurasian coots and Eurasian teals. The seven examples described in the paper have clear signs of human-made modifications, such as perforations and finger-holes, and were seemingly designed to imitate the calls of birds. They also come from a time when the last populations of hunter-gatherers in the Levant region were making the transition to an agricultural lifestyle.
- The bone flutes have clear signs of human manufacturing;
- Physical evidence of deliberate sound-making is rare from the Palaeolithic period;
- One of the flutes was found in whole and complete condition, an extremely rare find;
- Other than these, a few examples have been discovered from the Upper Palaeolithic period, largely from Europe;
- The oldest known bone flute dates back 40,000 years to the Swabian region of southwestern Germany.
The authors found seven aerophones, described as an instrument that uses vibrations in the air to produce sound, i.e. without a string or other object, at the Israeli site. The flute family falls into the aerophone category.
The sound they produce resembles the calls of kestrels and sparrowhawks, which are native to the region. The researchers used duck bones to recreate the ancient flutes and test their acoustic properties. Archaeologist Laurent Davin plays a reproduction of one of the 12,000-year-old bone wind instruments that was found at a site called Enyan-Mallaha in Israel here:
As the authors write, “Through technological, use-wear, taphonomic, experimental and acoustical analyses, we demonstrate that these objects were intentionally manufactured more than 12,000 years ago to produce a range of sounds similar to raptor calls and whose purposes could be at the crossroads of communication, attracting hunting prey and music-making.”
From hunter-gatherers to farmers
The instruments represent the earliest human-made devices designed to create artificial bird calls. They were made by the Natufian archaeological culture, which took over the region from 15,000 to 11,700 BP. The Natufians were noted, in particular, for their intricate jewellery and other personal ornaments.
As the agricultural economy took hold of the region, lifestyles changed drastically, societies became more complex, and our relationship to animals and the rest of the world went through a major shift. Domestication of plants and animals would begin in the Levant before it did on the European continent.
The Israeli examples come from different bones taken from the wings of birds, and researchers posit that the variations were meant to produce a range of different sounds.
They came up with some other theories that more discoveries and evaluations can confirm. They include,
- The very small size points to the fact that a player would have to have a certain amount of dexterity to play it;
- The distances between holes are short, again pointing to the idea that it would have taken skill;
- Similar replicas of ancient bone flutes from other cultures tends to support this idea.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Laurent Davin, a post-doctoral researcher, is one of the lead co-authors of the team. He talks about his surprise at the sounds made in the flute he’d recreated in The Courthouse News.
“It was very moving when I played it for the first time and heard the sound that Natufians made 12,000 years ago,” Davin said. “The surprise was also to find out that the spectral analysis showed that the flutes imitated falcon calls, two species of which the talons were the most used in Natufian personal ornament, which is yet another indication of the close relationship that existed between the Natufians and birds of prey.”
Davin notes that future research will include using the flute reproductions on the waterfowl of Lake Hula to see how they react to the sounds.
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