Music 'enabled human survival'

Scientists in Germany have published details of flutes dating back to the time that modern humans began colonising Europe, 35,000 years ago.

The flutes are the oldest musical instruments found to date.

The researchers say in the Journal Nature that music was widespread in pre-historic times.

They also suggest that music enabled our species to socialise which may have given our species the edge over Neanderthals who became extinct.

The team from Tubingen University have published details of three flutes found in the Hohle Fels cavern in southwest Germany.

The cavern is already well known as a site for signs of early human efforts; in May, members of the same team unveiled a Hohle Fels find that could be the world's oldest Venus figure.

The most well-preserved of the flutes is made from a vulture's wing bone, measuring 20cm long with five finger holes and two "V"-shaped notches on one end of the instrument into which the researchers assume the player blew.

The archaeologists also found fragments of two other flutes carved from ivory that they believe was taken from the tusks of mammoths.

Creative origins

The find brings the total number of flutes discovered from this era to eight, four made from mammoth ivory and four made from bird bones.

According to Professor Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University, this suggests that the playing of music was common as far back as 40,000 years ago when modern humans spread across Europe.

"It's becoming increasingly clear that music was part of day-to-day life," he said.

"Music was used in many kinds of social contexts: possibly religious, possibly recreational - much like we use music today in many kinds of settings."

The researchers also suggest that not only was music widespread much earlier than previously thought, but so was humanity's creative spirit.

"The modern humans that came into our area already had a whole range of symbolic artifacts, figurative art, depictions of mythological creatures, many kinds of personal ornaments and also a well-developed musical tradition," Professor Conard explained.

These flutes provide yet more evidence of the sophistication of the people that lived at that time Professor Chris Stringer Natural History Museum

The team argues that the emergence of art and culture so early might explain why early modern humans survived and Neanderthals, with whom they co-existed at the time, became extinct.

"Music could have contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks, and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans relative to a culturally more conservative and demographically more isolated Neanderthal populations," they wrote.

That is a view supported by Professor Chris Stringer, a human origins researcher at the Natural History Museum in London.

"These flutes provide yet more evidence of the sophistication of the people that lived at that time and the probable behavioural and cognitive gulf between them and Neanderthals," he said.

"I think the occurrence of these flutes and animal and human figurines about 40,000 years ago implies that the traditions that produced them must go back even further in the evolutionary history of modern humans - perhaps even into Africa more than 50,000 years ago.

"But that evidence has still to be discovered."

Sole known survivor of plane crash, 14,

MORONI, Comoros - Despite a fractured collarbone, a teenage girl clung to the wreckage of a plane for more than 13 hours before rescuers found her floating in the Indian Ocean, authorities said. The only known survivor of the crash, she was being flown back to Paris last night.

The Yemenia Airbus 310 jet was carrying 153 people when it went down in howling winds early Tuesday in the sea north of the Comoros Islands.

French officials late yesterday retracted claims that one of the plane’s black boxes had been found. French Commander Bertrand Mortemard de Boisse said that a signal detected from the debris of Yemenia Flight IY626 was from a distress beacon and not from one of the plane’s black boxes.

The flight data and cockpit voice recorders in those black boxes are crucial to help investigators determine the cause of the crash off this former French colony.

An Associated Press reporter saw 14-year-old Bahia Bakari in a Comoros hospital yesterday as she was visited by government officials. She was conscious with bruises on her face and gauze bandages on her right elbow and right foot. Her hair was pulled back and she was covered by a blue blanket but she gamely shook the hand of Alain Joyandet, France’s minister for international cooperation.

Her uncle, Joseph Yousouf, said Bahia also had a fractured collarbone.

“She is a courageous young girl,’’ Joyandet said, adding that Bahia held on to a piece of the plane from 1:30 a.m. Tuesday to 3 p.m., then signaled a passing boat, which rescued her.

“She really showed an absolutely incredible physical and moral strength,’’ he said. “She is physically out of danger, she is evidently very traumatized.’’

The girl was traveling with her mother, who is feared dead. They had left Paris on Monday night to see family in the Comoros.

“She’s asking for her mother,’’ Yousouf said. For fear of upsetting Bahia, Yousouf told her that her mother is in the room next door.

Joyandet said the girl left last night on a chartered executive jet and would be put in a Paris hospital upon arrival.

The passengers on the downed plane were flying the last leg of a journey from Paris and Marseille to Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes. Most were from Comoros, 66 were French citizens.

The girl’s father told French radio his oldest daughter could “barely swim’’ but managed to hang on. Kassim Bakari, who spoke with the girl by phone, said Bahia was ejected and found herself beside the plane.

“She couldn’t feel anything, and found herself in the water. She heard people speaking around her but she couldn’t see anyone in the darkness,’’ Bakari said on France’s RTL radio. “She’s a very timid girl, I never thought she would escape like that.’’

Sergeant Said Abdilai told Europe 1 radio that Bahia was too weak to grasp the life ring rescuers threw to her, so he jumped into the sea to get her. He said rescuers gave the trembling girl warm water with sugar.

Said Mohammed, a nurse at El Mararouf hospital in the Comoros capital of Moroni, said the girl was doing well.

The crash a few miles off this island nation came two years after aviation officials reported equipment faults with the plane, an aging Airbus 310 flying the last leg of a Yemenia airlines flight from Paris and Marseille to the Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes.

A top French official said the Airbus 310 crashed in deep water 9 miles north of the Comoran coast and 21 miles from the Moroni airport.

The French air accident investigation agency BEA was sending a team of safety investigators and Airbus specialists to Comoros, an archipelago of three main islands 1,800 miles south of Yemen, between Africa’s southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar.

The London-based International Federation of Air Line Pilots Association said the plane may have been attempting a go-around in rough weather for another approach when it hit the sea.