Henan Bone Flutes Dating Back To 6000 BC

Each week we look at a work of art or a cultural relic that focuses on the heritage of China.

The music is as old as humanity, and has made many forms of non-human evolution.

In 1987, 16 bone flutes dating from around 6000 BC, found in a Neolithic tomb of Jiahu, in the central province of Henan in China. These bone flutes, the nation's oldest known musical instruments, flutes are much older and archaeology excavated in Mesopotamia 2000 years before it was released in Egypt.

In antiquity, superstition and witchcraft have been used to explain natural phenomena and bone flutes have been used as a means of connecting to God and humans in sacrificial rites.

Jiahu bone flutes, currently detained in Henan Museum, and still be playable, is made from the bones of the wings red-crowned cranes, and are about 20 cm long. They are open finger holes and 5-8 vary, although most of the seven. The most visible is 22 cm long and has seven holes.

Different signs were found in the middle of some of these bone flutes, which show that the number of holes and the distances were measured accurately and if amended before drilling in order to include them in the field of music in which they were designed flutes work.

When these flutes were made, was a small hole at times next to a pair of finger holes to correct the difference in intonation. This technique is still used in the manufacture of Chinese instruments.

"The discovery of bone flutes Jiahu have improved our understanding of the history of Chinese music dates back to 10,000 years," says a Chinese Xiao Xinghua music specialist, who has studied the bone flutes for over 10 years.

But the discovery of Jiahu bone flutes also leaves many unsolved mysteries, says Xiao. For example, the finger holes of 0.1 to 0.3 cm in diameter. What was so small drilled holes and slippery? What kind of tools, flute makers use?

Another mystery of the producers of flute music math skills and temperament. Only if both were to a large extent have been able to determine the number of finger holes and the flute and their spacing, so that all the finger holes, can provide the perfect pitch of the bones of different length and thickness.



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