It was heralded as the world’s oldest musical instrument; a bone with two holes in it seemingly made by Neanderthals to serenade their companions. But now a study says it’s not an instrument at all - but rather, simply a bone chewed by hyenas and left in a cave. The research suggests historians have been fooled by these phoney objects - and, in fact, all such ‘instruments’ attributed to Neanderthals are simply chew toys of animals. A researcher says a 'bone flute' found in Slovenia is not an instrument - instead, he says it is simply a bone chewed by a hyena with teeth marks. The bone is shown here, believed to be the oldest musical instrument discovered in Europe, on show in Ljubljana. The bone was discovered on 18 July 1995 in Slovenia . The latest analysis was conducted by Dr Cajus Diedrich from the Paleo-Logic Independent Institute of Geosciences. In a paper published in the Royal Society of Open Science, he took a look at several ‘musical instruments’ that had been attributed to Neanderthals. Neanderthals may have created and worn the world's first jewellery 130,000 years ago, according to scientists. Researchers examining eight talons taken from a white-tailed eagle found at Krapina in Croatia say they were used to create necklace or bracelet. The claws bear multiple cut marks, notches and signs that they had been polishing by the Neanderthals that once inhabited the site where they were found. Anthropologists at the University Kansas say the talons appear to have been made into symbolic jewellery 80,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe. The findings add to evidence that Neanderthals were not the slow-witted and primitive creatures they are often portrayed as. One in particular, the Divje Babe Flute, is often said to be the world’s oldest musical instrument. The cave bear femur, pierced with two holes, was found in 1995 at the Divje Babe Archaeological park near Cerkno in northwestern Slovenia. Dr Diedrich said analysis of the bone shows the holes are teeth marks, and the shape is just the result of the bone not breaking when it was chewed. In most caves, carnivore damage like this can be seen in about 20 per cent of animal remains and 80 per cent of bear cub remains. But while adult remains were often ‘crushed to pieces’, bear cubs often had certain patterns like this. ‘These are not instruments, nor human made, but products of the most important cave bear scavengers of Europe, hyenas,’ Dr Diedrich wrote. ‘Hyenas left bones in repeating similar tooth mark and crush damage stages, demonstrating a butchering/bone cracking strategy. ‘Hyenas produced round-oval puncture marks in cub femora only by the bone-crushing premolar teeth of both upper and lower jaw.’ One instrument in particular, the Divje Babe Flute, is often said to be the world’s oldest musical instrument. The cave bear femur, pierced with two holes, was found in 1995 at the Divje Babe Archaeological park (shown) near Cerkno in northwestern Slovenia . The latest analysis says that many bones found in caves can simply be attributed to animals around 30,000 years ago, rather than Neanderthals. Shown is an exhibit of the life of a Neanderthal family in a cave in the Neanderthal Museum in the northern town of Krapina in Croatia . The first ‘Neanderthal flutes’ were discovered in Slovenia in the 1920s and, since then, many others have been identified. Sadly for those who thought Neanderthals might have played music in this way to one another, though, it seems the earlier analysis may have been wrong. Shown is the 'Divje Babe flute' bear bone, believed to be the oldest musical instrument discovered in Europe, in the National Museum in Ljubljana . Dr Diedrich derides all the research that has gone into these bones so far. He also points out that there is no evidence on the bones that tools have been used to make the holes, further cementing the idea they were made by hyena teeth. What’s more, he also said that most of the ‘bone flutes’ do not actually date from Neanderthal times - 200,000 to 30,000 years ago. Rather, he says they can more closely be attributed to the Aurignacian culture 38,000 to 29,000 years ago - sometimes said to be the first modern humans in Europe, owing to their grasp of using tools. ‘The “cave bear cub femora with holes” are, in all cases, neither instruments nor human made at all,’ he concludes. ‘All cave bear pseudo-bone flutes are not dated to Neanderthal Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian layers, but instead, if possible to date, to Late Palaeolithic, Aurignacian/Gravettian layers.’ He added: ‘Hyenas left, therefore, “pseudo-bone flutes” during the Late Middle to Late Pleistocene all over Europe in cave bear dens, and on different cave bear species/subspecies. ‘This is known due to lack of breakage on most of the cave bear cub femora, which generally show additional diagonal zigzag margins (from chewing joints by scissor teeth of hyenas) or have triangular or smaller scratch tooth marks.’
Researcher says a 'bone flute' found in Slovenia is not an instrument.
Instead he says it is simply a bone chewed by a hyena with teeth marks.
He claims all such instruments were made by hyenas, not Neanderthals.
And the bones do not even originate from Neanderthal times.