The oldest known musical instruments are flutes carved from bird bone and mammoth ivory around 40,000 years ago.

In the Hohle Fels cave in southwestern Germany, archaeologists uncovered a set of flutes made from griffon vulture bone and carved mammoth ivory, dated to roughly 40,000 years ago, during the early period when modern humans were settling in Europe. The bone flute is carved with five finger holes and a notched mouthpiece, precise enough that researchers have been able to reconstruct and play replicas.

The find suggests that music, far from being some later refinement of civilization, was already a developed practice among some of the earliest modern humans in Ice Age Europe. The same cave also produced the Venus of Hohle Fels, one of the oldest known depictions of the human form, and together the finds point to a surprisingly rich artistic and musical culture tens of thousands of years before writing or agriculture existed.