Comments on: 35,000-year-old German flutes display excellent kraftwerk

By: piratebrido

piratebrido — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:21:28 +0000

Commenting to congratulate you on your most excellent of puns.

By: Lilian Nattel

Lilian Nattel — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:11:19 +0000

I just like to think of people making music 35,000 years ago. There is something comforting in the continuity of it, the time scale.

By: brandon

brandon — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:26:06 +0000

Is there any indication of the scale these flutes used or the significance of the scored marks between holes i.e. ratio of length to pitch.
A musical culture almost indicates a mathematic culture, too, no?
nice post, thanks.

By: Martin R

Martin R — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:22:01 +0000

Haha, Kraftwerk means “power station”.
It’s a cool find though!

By: Tom Levenson

Tom Levenson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:21:19 +0000

You should be pleased w. that headline. If I may speculate wildly, I’d suggest that musical traditions could ahve played much more than a small part in social development. To point to a wildly distant example (in time, from this one) consider the reasoning behind the establishment of the Gregorian chant: the goal was to create a unified musical expression across the Carolingian empire.
Obviously, events in an already richly developed social setting fifteen hundred years ago are not directly comparable to anything going on so much more deeply in the past…but music is not minor, imho.