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Oldest playable musical instruments found at Jiahu early Neolithic site in China

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Abstract

Excavations at the early Neolithic site of Jiahu1,2 in Henan Province, China have produced what may be the earliest complete, playable, tightly-dated multinote musical instruments. Jiahu was occupied from 7000 BC to 5700 BC, considerably antedating the well known Peiligang culture3,4,5. Here we describe six exquisitely made complete flutes which were found in radiocarbon-dated excavation layers, along with fragments of perhaps 30 more. The flutes are made from the ulnae of the red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis Millen) and have 5, 6, 7 and 8 holes. The best preserved flute has been played and tonally analysed. In addition to early musical artefacts, the archaeological record at Jiahu1,2 contains important information on the very foundations of Chinese society. We describe the archaeological characteristics of the Jiahu site, details concerning its dating, its place in the prehistory of the Chinese Neolithic, the ethnicity of its population and the results of a tonal analysis of a nearly 9,000-year-old musical instrument found there.

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Figure 1: Bone flutes from burials at Jiahu.

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In addition, C.W. was supported by the Department of Science & Technology of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Structure Research Laboratory at USTC. Research at Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the US Department of Energy. We thank Huang Xiangpeng of the Music School of the Art Institute of China who supervised these important tests and the personnel of the same Music School who carried them out: Xiao Xinghua, Xu Taoying, Gu Bobao, Tong Zhongliang, Qiu Ping and Liu Haiwang.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Henan Province, Zhengzhou, 450000, Henan, China

    Juzhong Zhang

  2. Archaeometry Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, Anhui, China

    Juzhong Zhang & Changsui Wang

  3. Chemistry Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, 11973, New York, USA

    Garman Harbottle

  4. Paleobotany Laboratory, Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica, Beijing, 100080, China

    Zhaochen Kong

Authors
  1. Juzhong Zhang
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  2. Garman Harbottle
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  3. Changsui Wang
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  4. Zhaochen Kong
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Correspondence to Garman Harbottle.

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Zhang, J., Harbottle, G., Wang, C. et al. Oldest playable musical instruments found at Jiahu early Neolithic site in China. Nature 401, 366–368 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/43865

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/43865

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