In a Slovenian cave near the Idrijca River, archaeologists unearthed a strange artifact in 1995: a fragment of bone, about the length of a finger, punctured with round holes and charred by ancient fire. It was found near a hearth used by Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago.

To Ivan Turk, the archaeologist who led the excavation, the artifact seemed unmistakable. It was a flute. And it might be the oldest musical instrument ever discovered.

But the Divje Babe “flute” — named after the cave where it was found — has become one of the most hotly contested objects in paleoarchaeology. Some researchers hail it as revolutionary evidence of Neanderthal musical culture. Others argue it’s just a juvenile cave bear’s femur, perforated by scavenging Ice Age hyenas.

More than a quarter-century since its discovery, the debate still resonates.

A Neanderthal Musical Instrument You Can Actually Play?

The bone flute dates back at least 43,000 years, and possibly as far as 50,000. If it truly is a musical instrument, it predates the elegantly crafted flutes made by Homo sapiens from mammoth ivory and vulture bones found in southern Germany by thousands of years.

The Slovenian team that excavated the site, including Turk and his colleagues at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, argued the cavebear bone’s features were deliberate. Four holes had been drilled in a sequence that suggested finger placement. The bone’s ends had been shaped and broken in ways that suggested human handling.

To Bob Fink, a musicologist who analyzed the object, the implication was extraordinary. “These three notes on the Neanderthal bone flute are inescapably diatonic and will sound like a near-perfect fit within ANY kind of standard diatonic scale, modern or antique,” Fink wrote in a 2015 essay. The instrument, he believed, matched four notes on the diatonic scale: do (C), re (D), mi (E), fa (F).

That would suggest the maker understood tonal relationships in a scale — an intellectual feat that points to abstract thought, auditory memory, and even emotional communication. “We simply cannot conceive of it being otherwise,” Fink wrote, “unless we deny it is a flute at all.”

A Dream in Clay

Years later, a Slovenian musician put the hypothesis to the test.

Ljuben Dimkaroski, a trumpet player for the Ljubljana Opera Orchestra, obtained a carefully crafted clay replica of the flute. At first, he found it unlike any modern wind instrument. But eventually, he taught himself how to play it — claiming, in fact, that he figured it out in a dream.

What he produced was uncanny. In a short film by director Sašo Niskač, Dimkaroski can be seen playing fragments of Slovenian folk songs, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and even Ravel’s “Bolero.” He added improvisations, including animal mimicry, to show off the range and expression of the clay replica.

“The Mousterian musical instrument offers a unique insight into the Neanderthals’ symbolic behaviour and their cognitive abilities,” wrote Turk and Dimkaroski in a joint paper. It seemed, to them, that the Divje Babe object could only be explained by human design and human creativity.

The Gnawed Bone Theory

But not everyone is convinced.

Cajus Diedrich, a German paleobiologist, recently revisited the controversy. Publishing his findings in a 2015 edition of the Royal Society Open Science, Diedrich analyzed bone breakage patterns from 15 European cave sites and compared them with the Divje Babe artifact. His conclusion was that the punctures in the flute were consistent with hyena bite marks, not human toolwork.

Diedrich argued that Ice Age hyenas had powerful jaws and often gnawed on juvenile cave bear bones, puncturing them in patterns that mimicked deliberate shaping. “Most paleoanthropologists accept that the Divje Babe ‘flute’ is a carnivore-chewed bone,” noted April Nowell, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Supporters of the flute hypothesis, however, say the holes are too regular and well-spaced to be accidental. The National Museum of Slovenia, where the artifact is now displayed, still describes it as the oldest known musical instrument. Its official plaque reads:
“The flute from Divje babe testifies to the fact that Neanderthals were capable of such an abstract and uniquely human activity as creating music.”

A Matter of Culture

The question at the heart of the Divje Babe controversy is larger than a single artifact. It’s about what kind of beings Neanderthals were.

For decades, Neanderthals were portrayed as brutish and unimaginative — essentially doomed to extinction by their inability to innovate. That picture has changed. Archaeological finds now show that they buried their dead, made tools, may have used pigments (thereby making the oldest art), and interbred with Homo sapiens. But the Divje Babe flute challenges an even bigger question: could they have created music?

If they did, it would suggest symbolic behavior on par with early Homo sapiens.

That’s what makes the artifact so tantalizing. If it is a flute, it may not just be the earliest musical instrument. It may be the earliest sign that Neanderthals, too, had songs.

Even if the perforated bone was turned into a musical instrument by chance, this doesn’t necessarily mean Neanderthals did employ music in their culture. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. Neanderthals may have used musical instruments made from perishable materials like wood or reeds. Or perhaps they made music with their voices, clapping hands or beating on hollow logs.

“It’s possible,” Nowell said, “but no evidence of instruments or musical behavior has yet been found.”