Prehistoric flutes date to 42,000 years ago

Good news, flute fans. You have prehistoric company -- flutes go back at least 42,000 years, longer ago than previously reported, conclude archaeologists looking at the likely era of the first modern human occupation of Europe

In an upcoming report in the Journal of Human Evolution, led by carbon dating expert Thomas Higham of the United Kingdom's University of Oxford, experts reanalyzed Stone-Age artifacts from Geißenklösterle cave in southwestern Germany.
The "Aurignacian" artifacts found at the cave site have long been associated with modern humans, rather than our Neandertal cousins who populated Europe for hundreds of thousands of years before dying out around 30,000 years ago. Geißenklösterle cave lies in the "former Danube Valley through which the Ach River flows today," notes the study. And its artifacts have been central to debates about when early modern humans first moved into Europe.
That's too bad, because earlier radiocarbon dates of items from the cave seem to have been erroneous, the team reports, ones that made the era look more recent (by about 2,000 to 3,000 years) than it really was:

" These dates fueled an extensive debate on the chronology of the earliest European Aurignacian and the integrity of the archaeological sequence at the site, which remained unresolved for many years," says the study.

Reanalyzing the dates, the artifacts suggest that early modern humans migrated into Germany around 42,000 years ago, moving up the Danube Vally. Together with a 41,000 year-old tooth found in England, and similar artifacts found in Italy, the evidence suggests people had moved into Europe by around 45,000 years ago, moving into the region near the cave during a cold spell in Europe's climate that lasted a few thousand years (see Q & A below).

Flute from the site of Geißenklösterle made from mammoth ivory

CAPTION

The University of Tübingen

And those folks likely played music, as shown by a swan bone flute and and mammoth bone flute dating to 42,000 years ago among the artifacts (first found in the 1970's but erroneously dated to around 37,000 years ago). Concludes the study:

"...the region can be viewed as one of the key areas in which a variety of cultural innovations, including figurative art, mythical images, and musical instruments, are first documented. These dates are consistent with the Danube Valley serving as an important corridor for the movement of people and ideas."

USA TODAY asked Higham a few questions about the results, by email:

Q: What is the mechanism for modern human migration northward during a cold climate phase. Were they pursuing reindeer or the like?
A: Yes, we find that in some periods of the last Ice Age there are modern humans in Europe that are subsisting almost exclusively upon cold adapted animals like reindeer. At Abri Pataud in France 97% of the bones excavated were butchered reindeer bone. I think what happens is that hunters are positioning themselves with respect to herds of animals and planning to be where these animals are migrating or moving to. This is a classic cold adapted way of life in this period. Generally speaking we would think that under conditions of extreme climatic lows, such as the Heinrich event 4 extreme period around 39000 years ago, that human populations might contract southwards to less cold locations. We know this happened during the peak of the Last Glacial Maximum for example. It is interesting that in this period we still find early moderns in Europe, subsisting upon a restricted range of cold fauna.
Q: How old is music then as a technology, if flutes were possessions of immigrants to Europe ~40,000 years ago?
A: It's a very good question. We just don't know. The alternatives are that this behaviour was either brought into Europe by incoming moderns, or developed there when they arrived. The problem is that we have virtually no other evidence for this behaviour archaeologically to be able to comment more confidently. There are other musical instruments like these, for example at Isturitz in the French Pyrenees, but whether these are the same age is not known. There are later examples, from the Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian periods, but from this period, nothing else. It seems unlikely that we have the oldest examples. The likelihood is that this behaviour is older, but by how much is a guess.
Q. What is the basis for the disconnect between Neanderthal and Aurignacian cultures? Have early modern human remains vs. Neandertal ones been found in burials at sites with these tools of this culture?
A: That's right. Our assessment that the Aurignacian is an anatomically modern industry is based on the absence of Neanderthal remains in archaeological horizons with the Aurignacian and the presence of modern human remains in some sites of the industry. These are mostly smaller items such as teeth, but this is the prevailing view amongst specialists. The Aurignacian is the signature of modern humans.

A 2002 study that reconstructed the swan bone flute concluded that it likely played a series of C, D, F and B notes, "loud and clear."

 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2012/05/prehistoric-flutes-found-from-42000-year-old-cave/1#.T8AE8WvF98E