The Flute and Feb 25th: Summaries

The Flute

(Unabridged Original Post)

I was watching Cave of Forgotten Dreams last night, when the talk changed from cave drawings to paleolithic tools.  This was when I first found out about paleolithic flutes, and particularly the oldest one ever found.  The flute was carved from vulture bone, and was also found in the workshop of some paleolithic Da Vinci.  Carbon dating all the tools and pieces of art in the are gives evidence that the flute is 40,000 years old.

The flute itself is a 5 hole flute.  The cool thing about this flute is that it is not only the oldest undisputed flute as of the movie, it is not just a simple hollow tube with holes.  This flute was the making of an artisan.  There are notches all along the sides.  The reason for this is that the bone was cut in half, long ways, and hollowed out using stone tools.  Then, using the notches as a guide, the two pieces were put back together and sealed with an air tight sealant, perhaps a primitive animal glue.

Animals that may have heard this flute include woolly mammoths and sabertooth tigers.  Another animal that was still around, the Neanderthal.  It is impossible for us to know if Neanderthals had their own music, but evidence suggests it was voice or percussion based.  One of the distinguishing features of Humans is that our paleolithic sites have art created out of bone, while Neanderthals have no such trinkets at their sites.  Therefore, one of the distinguishing features of modern humans compared to the neanderthals that died out is that we have complex music, and they did not.


Feb 25th Again

Yea, February 25th again.  In my Rocksmith blog I typically did the day before on the day I posted, so that's what I"ll be doing here.  I'm establishing a style here, so I guess that's what I'll talk about.  In many of my posts in this area, I'll do a little summary.  This example is not an example, it is the real deal:

Watching: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Playing: Grandia
Reading: Elantris
Listening to: Black Sabbath 13

It will typically go at the bottom after I describe whatever it is I write about that day.  Sometimes I will talk about it, sometimes not.   Sometimes I may add to it, like "writing" if I particularly do something worth.. noting.  

Today I do in both the upper and lower post.  Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a Werner Herzog documentary.  I have watched several of his documentaries, and if you like that sort of thing, his are usually very visually striking and have some really deep thoughts on humanity in them, but some people find him pretentious and overly verbose.  Cave of Forgotten Dreams is probably my favorite of his now.  It is about cave paintings found that are double the age of the earliest known cave paintings of the time.

Tomorrow I'll be talking about Black Sabbath's new album as I finish listening to the last few songs.