The world's oldest musical instrument is revealed

Archaeologists have found flutes made from mammoth ivory and bird bones dating back more than 40,000 years.

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Two flutes are made from mammoth ivory in the cave
Geissenkloesterle in the Swabian Jura mountains in Germany.

Professor Tom Higham, a researcher at Oxford University in England, and colleagues discovered two ancient flutes in the Geissenkloesterle cave in the Swabian Jura mountains in Germany, the BBC reported. Test results show that the ancients created them about 42,000 to 43,000 years ago. With that time, they are the oldest instruments that scientists have ever discovered. Geissenkloesterle Cave is also where archaeologists find much evidence of the modern migration to Europe.

"The results of dating dates are consistent with a hypothesis that we came up with a few years ago, under which the Danube River is a major corridor for the movement of people to Europe from 40,000 to 45,000 years ago." Said Nick Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tuebingen in Germany. Conard was a member of the expert team who found two flutes.

Experts say the ancients used musical instruments to perform religious or recreational rituals. Some researchers even argue that music may be one of the factors that helps modern people gain an edge in competition with Neanderthals - a race that has become extinct in Europe since 30,000 years ago. Thanks to music, our ancestors maintained larger communities than Neanderthals. Due to the larger community size, modern people always prevailed before Neanderthals in the process of territorial expansion.