Archeologists find 35,000 year old flute
This isn't the first evidence of ancient music making, not by a long way, but it's further corroboration that it wasn't just a phenomenon restricted to one or two small communities. It makes you wonder, what is it that causes people to make music? I mean, I've been surrounded by music my whole life -- when you consider my social and family background the only thing that's remarkable about the fact that I play instruments is that I didn't start until I was 16 -- but these people didn't have radios or written music to inspire them. What makes someone start playing a little ditty, or singing a tune, if they've never heard music before? I suppose music could have been an everyday part of human life even then, but it must have started at some point.
Did someone get a tune stuck in their head one day and have to invent music to play it? Did someone start jamming to the rhythm of flint knapping? Or were animal skin-clothed early humans singing along with the birds, like some kind of surreal disney movie?
And what the hell is music, when you get down to it?
-Ben
In other news, I've learned today that if you're half asleep a cat sneezing sounds rather a lot like a silenced pistol. I woke up terrified that I was being assassinated, then I remembed that suppressed weapons are actually only marginally quieter than normal guns, not the muffled sneezing noise you hear in films.
