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Antique Musical Instruments - The Flute
The flute has been dated to prehistoric times, appearing in different forms and locations around the world. A three-holed flute made from a mammoth tusk (dated to 30,000 to 37,000 years ago) was discovered in 2004, and two flutes made from swans' bones excavated a decade earlier (C.36,000 years ago) are among the oldest known musical instruments.
A fragment of the femur of a juvenile cave bear, with two to four holes, and dated to about 43,100 years ago, may also be an early flute. Some early flutes were made out of tibias (shin bones). Playable 9000-year-old Gudi (literally, "bone flute"), made from the wing bones of red-crowned cranes, with five to eight holes each, were excavated from a tomb in Jiahu in the Central Chinese province of Henan.
The invention of plastics in the 20th century gave birth to the plastic recorder, which continues to be used in music education throughout western schools.
