When Did Ancient Humans Start Making Music?

When did ancient humans start making music? The oldest flute is 40,000 years old, but music is almost certainly far older. Music shows up in every culture we know of, and the oldest instruments ever found were already so refined that they must have had ancestors. This video follows the clues, from vulture-bone and mammoth-ivory flutes in German caves to a disputed bone from Slovenia that may or may not be a Neanderthal flute. We also look at what the very first instrument probably was, and why early humans may have made music at all. In this video: Why music appears in every human culture studied The oldest flutes ever dug out of the ground The Slovenian bone scientists still argue about What the first instrument probably was What music may have been for CHAPTERS (ESTIMATED from script length at 150 wpm. Adjust timestamps after editing!) 00:00 The song stuck in your head 01:50 When did music really begin? 04:05 Is music in every culture? 07:50 The oldest instruments ever found 10:45 The bone scientists can't agree on 13:40 What was the first instrument? 17:05 Why did early humans make music? 19:50 So, when did music start? 21:05 Quick recap Sources mentioned in the video: Hohle Fels flutes (Conard, Malina & Münzel, Nature, 2009): https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08169 Geissenklösterle radiocarbon re-dating (Higham et al., Journal of Human Evolution, 2012): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.03.003 Music universals (Savage, Brown, Sakai & Currie, PNAS, 2015): https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1414495112 Divje Babe bone, X-ray micro-tomography (Tuniz, Bernardini, Turk et al., Archaeometry, 2012): https://ro.uow.edu.au/scipapers/4280 Divje Babe bone, piercing experiments (Turk & Bastiani, EXARC Journal, 2020): https://doaj.org/article/a195bfdf58f9473a8... Joint music making and helping in 4-year-olds (Kirschner & Tomasello, 2010): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.201... Next time a song gets stuck in your head, tell us in the comments which one it is. Subscribe for more ancient human mysteries explained simply. #AncientHumans #HumanEvolution #PrehistoricMusic (Animated explainer. Illustrations are stylized and not real photographs.)