Talk:Divje Babe flute

Steven Mithen and another flute
This was added recently:


 * Steven Mithen (2006) proposes that the Neanderthals had an elaborate proto-linguistic system of communication which was more musical than modern human language, and which predated the separation of language and music into two separate modes of cognition. However some people argue that singing and playing flute do not relate at all. Another European bone flute dated to 37-30 kya was discovered on the other northern Alp side by Prof. Nicholas Conard.

I have a couple of questions: 1. Does Steven Mithen comment on this particular flute? What is his the link between his "proto-linguistic communication" and this (potential) artifact? 2. "Some people argue" is very weak language. Who argues this, and why is it relevant? 3. The article about the much younger European flute does not specify whether it was made by Neanderthal or modern Human (they were co-habitant at that time), and also claims to be the oldest known flute. How should we treat this information in relation to the Divje Babe artifact? I don't think that simply mentioning that someone else found a definite flute that is 20,000 years younger doesn't really help us understand the Divje Babe's significance. There should be more to say on it, but I am not sure what.

-- Rainwarrior (talk) 05:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The stuff about the singing Neanderthals is interesting but borderline WP:SYNTH. Birds sing but they don't make flutes. There's no obvious relationship between the two activities. As for the sentence about later flutes, it seems irrelevant. We know that flutes existed later, and the fact is alluded to in the quotation further down the article ("uncontested bone flutes from European Upper Paleolithic"). Perhaps a sentence or two on the dates of the earliest uncontested flutes would be desirable? Paul B (talk) 11:26, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll just move it here to the talk page for now. Feel free to integrate appropriate parts back into the article. - Rainwarrior (talk) 06:42, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Mithen does comment on the flute (pp. 243-244) and doubts that it is a human artifact, accepting D'Errico's argument. This goes along with his doubt that Neanderthals had the ability to manufacture musical instruments, based on his interpretation of their cognitive abilities. In light of that, the removed material is basically an accurate description of his opinion of the musicality of Neanderthals, but its inclusion here seems to mischaracterize his opinion regarding this object. Rigadoun (talk) 07:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

A recent X-RAY COMPUTED MICRO-TOMOGRAPHY OF THE DIVJE BABE ‘FLUTE’
A recent article in Archaeometry (2012) describes a micro CT examination of the Divje Babe flute. Just thought you might be interested. It is available at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2011.00630.x/abstract — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevekirb (talk • contribs) 15:26, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * This reference has been included in the article. - Rainwarrior (talk) 22:56, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Paleolithic is still considered to be the French domain
I am trying to work out what exactly this is supposed to mean:

"Such bones were discovered also elsewhere in Central Europe, but in a much lower number, and it is unlikely that cave bears would make such holes only in Central Europe and only in a specific period. That these bones are still not recognised by international research community, Mitja Brodar attributes to the fact that most of the bones were found on the territory of France and the Paleolithic is still considered to be the French domain, although not a single bone with holes have been found there. The only one ever discovered bone point with a hole has been discovered in Potok Cave."

It's clearly part of recent additions presenting the views of Mitja Brodar, which have been rather clumsily inserted into the article at various places. I think it's saying that the French believe they have some sort of monopoly on Paleolithic "high culture" and so finds from elsewhere tend to get ignored. But its all rather rambling and tangental. Should the passage "most of the bones were found on the territory of France" have the word "not" in it? Paul B (talk) 15:08, 31 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi, I've been invited to comment here on the text I added back in March 2012. Frankly, I don't remember anymore about reading this article, but the relevant sentence actually states: "There are no holes in the west of Europe, and because the Palaeolithic is unfortunately still decided about by the French who have most of it, these holes are still not recognised as a human work." ([Na zahodu Evrope lukenj ni, in ker o paleolitiku žal še vedno odločajo Francozi, ki ga imajo največ, te luknje še vedno niso priznane kot človeško delo.]). --Eleassar my talk 20:00, 19 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The French control the paleolithic? Was that agreed to by the EU at some point? This sources seems on the face of it to be somewhat suspicious. Paul B (talk) 15:17, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

New paper 2015
‘Neanderthal bone flutes’: simply products of Ice Age spotted hyena scavenging activities on cave bear cubs in European cave bear dens

Its pretty sceptical.©Geni (talk) 19:07, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree, this should definitely be included DGedye (talk) 22:27, 11 July 2017 (UTC)


 * That work by Diedrich's has been included in this article. - Rainwarrior (talk) 23:29, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Citations of unpublished papers by Bob Fink
As best I can make out, the following sources have not been published in an authoritative source.

Fink, Bob, 1997. "Neanderthal Flute: Oldest Musical Instrument's 4 Notes Matches 4 of Do, Re, Mi Scale". Retrieved 2006-01-22. Fink, Bob (2000). "Odds calculated against Neanderthal flute being a chance product of animal bites". Archived from the original on 2006-05-27. Retrieved 2006-05-27. Fink, Bob, 2002-3, "The Neanderthal flute and origin of the scale: fang or flint? A response," in: Ellen Hickmann, Anne Draffkorn Kilmer and Ricardo Eichmann (Eds.), Studies in Music Archaeology III, Verlag Marie Leidorf GmbH., Rahden/Westf. Germany, pp 83–87. Probability analysis.

The first two are clearly unpublished. The last listing may inadvertently suggest that his "The Neanderthal flute and origin of the scale: fang or flint? A response" has been published in Studies in Music Archaeology. Checking the listing of authors presented by Verlag Marie Leidorf at http://www.vml.de/e/autoren.php?autor=F053, Mr. Fink's name does not appear, as far as I can tell. Although an article in that journal apparently cites Fink's analyses, the article itself argues this artifact is not a flute--in direct opposition to Fink's arguments from his research. Although being cited in an article in Studies in Music Archaeology may be testament to value of his independent research, the citation here should make clear the difference between Fink's analyses having been referenced vs. publication of his apparently unpublished "The Neanderthal flute and origin of the scale: fang or flint? A response".

I'll be delighted if we can ever feel more confident about the Divje Babe artifact being a flute, but at present, I think we must agree the jury's still out. In his personal research and correspondence about it posted on the web, it's clear Fink has worked hard to sort it out, and hats off for that. I don't mean to diss his work in any way, I applaud his efforts. But until his work is published in an authoritative journal governed by peer review, I suggest it's best considered as original research and at present, doesn't serve as a suitable reference in this article. Jacques Bailhé 19:58, 23 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I've made a heavy revision to the article in the past few days. The past version of this article had primarily been written by Bob Fink, and had initially contained lengthy inclusions of his self-published research, and obviously biased and leading arguments, especially using quotations of other authors that contradicted their actual conclusions. Bob Fink passed away in 2016, unfortunately, so it would be impossible to discuss this with him. What I found is that his 1997 publication about the diatonic scale theory was directly mentioned and referenced by many of the referenced articles. Nowell and Morley both made references to the argument as continued on his personal website too. However, the scale theory was disputed on the basis of bone length, and even Turk turned away from it, especially in favour of Dimkaroski's alternative reconstruction. So, while I have tried hard to undo his self promotion and manipulation of this article, I do think Bob Fink's theory was a relevant part of the argument, at least for the time, and is interesting enough to mention. I've pared it down to just the part I think is relevant, and I've removed most of the archived weblinks, but one or two remain in the references, worth keeping IMO because they do provide useful context for the history of the argument, especially for references made in Morley's 2006 article, and otherwise would be very hard to find in research. - Rainwarrior (talk) 22:54, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

NPOV
Sorry, but i have to neutralize here a bit. Ready to talk ATBWikirictor (talk) 21:54, 23 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I have made a heavy revision recently. Please comment, if you have an opinion. - Rainwarrior (talk)

What supports the 43100 ± 700 BP date?
Reference 14 does not give a date of 43.1k, it actually says "Initially, Lau et al. (1997) showed the flute to be > 43 ka."

The abstract for "Lau et al 1997" is at, and it says "The ESR ages limit the maximum age for the Mousterian layers and the flute to between 67 ± 10 ka and 82 ± 11 ka." (It's not completely clear if 67 ± 10 ka is a minimum, or if it's just a minimum value for the maximum.)

So in summary, maybe a minimum of 43k from carbon dating and a maximum = 82 + 11 = 93k from ESR.

Also, the National Museum of Slovenia's current page for the flute is at. It says "60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute", and then later on it says "60,000 years before present", and then even later on it says, slightly differently, "it is about 60,000-50,000 years old". It doesn't give any detailed references for those numbers.

This all comes back to the debate about whether or not it is actually a Neanderthal flute, because modern humans existed in other European locations by 43100 BP, some of them not so far away from Divje Babe, whereas there almost certainly weren't any modern humans in that part of Europe 60000 BP.

I also found by Turk et al 2018, which is a summary of all the evidence for it being a Neanderthal flute - full article behind paywall. The abstract suggests that the article is mostly about the question of the holes being human-made or not, however it also refers to "chronostratigraphic, palaeo-environmental, and archaeological contexts".

Pdorrell2 (talk) 08:59, 24 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Morley (2006) gives a summary:
 * "Recent Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating of the layer (layer 8) has dated it to around 60,000 years BP (before present) (Ivan Turk, pers. comm.; these ﬁndings are to be published in L’Anthropologie later in 2006/7, and in greater detail along with a climatochronological study in 2007). Layer 8 had previously been radiocarbon dated to 43,100 ±700 years BP (Nelson 1997); according to Turk (pers. comm.) the radiocarbon date is superseded by the more reliable ESR dates. These dates are in contrast to some erroneously quoted of up to 82,000 years (e.g. Fink 1997)."
 * There are the two references given for the 50-60ka estimate, apparently based on ESR dating. It seems that Turk insists that this overrides the previous estimate, though I have not found subsequent other publications that acknowledge it yet. I do not know that the dating would be disputed, as most arguments against Turk do not accept it as a flute in the first place, and you kind of have to do that before the dating becomes a critical issue. There was an assertion I have removed from the article that Mitja Brodar claimed that it was a Cro-Magnon flute instead, because I believe it was a misinterpretation of his writing. I do not believe he accepts it as a flute. (Even the most conservative 43100 seems to allow the "oldest known instrument" claim.)
 * Blackwell, B.A.B., Yu, E.S.K., Skinner, A.R., Turk, I., Blickstein, J.I.B., Turk, J., Yin, V.S.W., Lau, B. 2007, ESR-Dating at Divje babe I, Slovenia. In: Turk, I. (ed.), Divje babe I: Upper Pleistocene Palaeolithic site in Slovenia, Part 1: Geology and Palaeontology. Opera Instituti Archaeologici Sloveniae 13, Ljubljana, 123–157.
 * Blackwell, B.A.B., Yu, E.S.K., Skinner, A.R., Turk, I., Blickstein, J.I.B., Skaberne, D., Turk, J., Lau, B. 2009, Dating and paleoenvironmental interpretation of the Late Pleistocene archaeological deposits at Divje Babe I, Slovenia. In: Calbet, M. and Szmidt, C. (eds.), The Mediterranean from 50 000 to 25 000 BP: Turning Points and New Directions. Oxford, 179-210.
 * I've made other heavy revisions of the article recently. It could probably use some editing to clarify the current best known date, but it would help if there was some independent commentary to reference. - Rainwarrior (talk) 23:18, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

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Can this article please be reworked?
It's one of the most biased articles I've seen on Wikipedia. Incredibly one-sided, and thus unreliable. 178.37.192.168 (talk) 01:14, 27 October 2023 (UTC)


 * So, 16 years ago I took note of this article because of a conflict of interest dispute with Bob Fink (see above) who has sadly since passed on, but I guess today I felt like taking a pass at improving it. The state of it has been bothering me for many years. :S So, I did a big revision. I tried not to remove anything that didn't seem completely redundant, or superfluous, or needless. The references that existed were good, but I noted many of the quotes were clearly cherry picked against the author's conclusions. I replaced those quotes with ones more indicative of their author's conclusion. I tried to reorganize everything to be easier to follow. All of Turk's rebuttal points are still there, but I tried to make it clear what's his opinion, and what's not. I tried to make the . Finally I removed some passages about Dimkaroski's reconstruction which seemed like self promotion. I'm not sure who added them to the article, but it was making claims (published by him) that this did things that no modern instrument does (extremely dubious), and needless superlatives like it can play any modern genre, etc. It's a unique instrument, and a fantastic bit of experimental research, but this article shouldn't feel like an advertisement for it. Of the articles I tracked down, the best one was Morley's 2006 comprehensive meta-review, which can be easily read here: Mousterian musicianship? The case of the Dive Babe I bone. I would highly recommend that article to provide a firm basis for further revision to the article. Anyway, hopefully that puts it on a better track. We'll see if I haven't stumbled into another edit dispute decades later... - Rainwarrior (talk) 04:53, 29 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I was also annoyed that the "5th hole" on the rear of the bone was mentioned so many times but he have no photograph of it, so I made a diagram of it based on photographs in Morley's paper. - Rainwarrior (talk) 05:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC)


 * As a follow-up, today I searched through Wikipedia for references to the flute, and tried to review statements about the flute to present it neutrally, rather than factually a flute. - Rainwarrior (talk) 22:42, 30 May 2024 (UTC)