Prehistoric music
[citation needed] Findings from Paleolithic archaeology sites suggest that prehistoric people used carving and piercing tools to create instruments.
[5] It is likely that the first musical instrument was the human voice itself, which can make a vast array of sounds, from singing, humming and whistling through to clicking, coughing and yawning.
[citation needed] The noises produced by work, such as pounding seed and roots into a meal, are a likely source of rhythm created by early humans.
[11] Geoffrey Miller suggests musical displays play a role in "demonstrating fitness to mate."
[12] Similarly, communal singing occurs among both sexes in cooperatively breeding songbirds of Australia and Africa, such as magpies[13] and white-browed sparrow-weavers.
Despite the lack of physical evidence in some cases, Egyptologists theorise that the development of certain instruments known of the Old Kingdom period, such as the end-blown flute, took place during this time.
Spinning disks, bone tubes, and a bullroarer were found in the Southern and Western Capes of South Africa that date back from 2525±85 BP - 1732 AD.
There were also many more bone tubes found in the Matjes River which may have been used for flutes, trumpets, whistles, bells, and mbira keys.
[17] Numerous mbira keys were found in Zimbabwe that date back to 210±90 BP - Later Iron Age.
References to Indian classical music (marga) are found in the Vedas, ancient scriptures of the Hindu tradition.
Smaller bird bones were preferred to bigger ones due to the difference in sound, although they are more difficult to play as a result of their size.
[20] Two deer antlers were discovered in the Go O Chua site of southern Vietnam which were used as stringed instruments, they are dated to be at minimum 2,000 years old.
[21] Several lithophones were also found across the country which would have been laid down on strings with wooden or bamboo frames and struck to make noise.
Music has formed an integral part of the social, cultural and ceremonial observances of these people, down through the millennia of their individual and collective histories to the present day, and has existed for 40,000 years.
In traditional situations it is played only by men, usually as an accompaniment to ceremonial or recreational singing, or, much more rarely, as a solo instrument.
[citation needed] A clapstick is a type of musical instrument that, according to western musicological classification, falls into the category of percussion.
By modifying the expansiveness of its circuit and the speed given it, and by changing the plane in which the bullroarer is whirled from horizontal to vertical or vice versa, the modulation of the sound produced can be controlled, making the coding of information possible.
The low-frequency component of the sound travels extremely long distances, clearly audible over many miles on a quiet night.
Banks Island Eskimos were still using bullroarers circa 1963 (59-year-old "Susie" being documented scaring off four polar bears armed with only three seal hooks and vocals.
[27] Aleut, Eskimo and Inuit used bullroarers occasionally as a children's toy or musical instruments, but preferred drums and rattles.
[29] A one-of-a-kind Upper Paleolithic era Seashell Horn was discovered in the Marsoulas cave in 1931, which is made of a Charonia lampus shell.
Dating back to the early Magdalenian period, it was modified to be played as a wind instrument by blowing air through the mouthpiece located at the apex.
[35] On announcing the discovery, scientists suggested that the "finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe".
They depict a standing double flute player and a sitting musician playing a triangular-shaped lyre or harp.
A wood-lined pit contained a group of six flutes made from yew wood, between 30 and 50 cm (12 and 20 in) long, tapered at one end, but without any finger holes.
[41] For thousands of years, Canada has been inhabited by Indigenous Peoples from a variety of different cultures and of several major linguistic groupings.
