THE NEANDERTHAL FLUTE FROM DIVJE BABE IN NOVA GORICA

by ELIO CANDUSSI

On Saturday 8 February, thanks to Boštjan Gombač, many Italians but also as many Slovenes gathered in Kardelj Square, next to the Town Hall of Nova Gorica, were able to learn about the Neanderthal flute, discovered in a cave called “Divje Babe”.

Boštjan is a Slovenian multi-instrumentalist and, using a perfect reproduction of the original flute, he played this musical instrument which is considered the oldest in the world, to celebrate the title of European Capital of Culture of Nova Gorica and Gorizia.

For me this flute was not a surprise because thanks to an excursion guided by my friend Oscar and organized by the Senior Group “Slow trekking” of the CAI of Gorizia, I discovered its existence as early as April 2011, when scholars were still uncertain about its origin. A summary report on this discovery was published in issue 95 of the journal Isonzo-Soča.

The destination of the CAI excursion was the Šebrelje plateau in the municipality of Cerkno. When we reached the church dedicated to St. Ivan / St. John the Baptist, we waited for the arrival of the guardian of the cave located below. The cavity was obviously locked, there were few descriptive boards and the signs of excavation and study work in progress were evident.

A board informed us that the Divje Babe cave, located at 450 meters, is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world because it contains bones of 58 animal species (most attributed to Ursus speleus) and stone and bone tools from various historical periods. It is a Palaeolithic deposit, which has been the subject of excavations organized by the Institute of Archaeology in Ljubljana since 1980.

Inside the cave, after passing a tunnel inhabited by families of bats hanging from the vault, there was a huge mass of stratified earth, probably due to various collapses. It had been partially excavated and here and there large bear bones sprouted, according to the guide there must still be hundreds of them under the ground. An incredible spectacle.

Finally, the board informed us that in 2005 the site had finally been opened to the public.

In previous years, in this cave, the team of archaeologist Ivan Turk had unearthed a particular bone among the remains of a hearth, an extraordinarily important find, an object that could totally change the image of Neanderthal man. The bone was so damaged that at first it was not recognized as a flute, but looked like a piece of femur about 12 cm long, with small holes.

To fully understand the disputes raised by the Slovenian musical instrument, it is first necessary to frame it in the environment in which it was found. The Divje Babe Cave was inhabited in the Upper Pleistocene (ca. 127,000 – 11,700 years ago) mainly by cave bears, but also brown bears, cave lions, foxes, leopards and lynxes sought shelter there.

In addition, more than 700 stone artifacts, 14 bone objects and about twenty hearths found there testified to the presence of hominids, from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens.

It was soon established that this bone was a piece of the femur or tibia of a young bear and that it was dated about 46,000 years ago, towards the end of the Neanderthal era, when Homo sapiens had not yet appeared.

It became more and more interesting, because shortly thereafter the idea that it could be a flute and in this case it would be the oldest flute in the world took shape. However, scholars were reluctant to admit that they were dealing with a musical instrument because of the characteristics of the holes that were not similar to those made on the instruments of the Upper Palaeolithic.

And the holes then? No obvious sign of workmanship could be seen, so the holes may not have been produced by the hand of man. And then there was another problem: even assuming that the holes were the work of man, the dating placed the instrument in a typical Neanderthal period, when Sapiens had not yet made its appearance in Europe. And a Neanderthal who made and played flutes did not correspond at all to the image that had been spread for decades in the academic environment, as well as outside it.

So was it a simple bear bone nibbled by wild animals or damaged by bacteria? It was verified that the holes had been produced by external mechanical pressures. At this point the hypothesis of a chemical process caused by bacteria was dropped. It was necessary to see if they were holes drilled by wild animals.

But the bite of a Paleolithic animal would undoubtedly have broken the bone of its prey and therefore could not have produced such precise and aligned holes. Therefore, the latter hypothesis also fell.

The definitive solution to the dilemma came thanks to the experiment of the archaeologist Giuliano Bastiani who replicated the drilling of the bone in the laboratory with tools of the time, achieving the same results. The last confirmation came from a further analysis performed by means of a CT scan, which confirmed the nature of the holes, which could only have been produced by a human hand.

So there would seem to be no doubt: it is a flute and this flute was manufactured by an individual of the Neanderthal human species.

Apart from his now indisputable technical ability, the Neanderthal man now appears to us as a sensitive individual, a lover of music and therefore certainly also capable of formulating an abstract thought, in fact what could be more abstract than music?

Finally, the new dates of Divje Babe’s flute have determined an age between 50,000 and 60,000 years.

Currently this is the only musical instrument attributed to Neanderthals, but research into the flute’s technical resources fascinates scientists and will certainly continue. So what could be better to celebrate the renewed collaboration between Nova Gorica and Gorizia, European Capital of Culture, than the sound of a musical instrument attributed to one of our common ancestors?