Sound that was music to ears of cavemen

A hush fell over the press centre as notes from a flute designed by a Neanderthal more than 50,000 years ago drifted across the room. Built from the thigh bone of an ancient cave bear for authenticity, the flute was a replica of one of the world's oldest known instruments, found in 1995 in a cave in Slovenia.

The scientist who built the flute, Prof Jelle Atema of Boston University, is also an accomplished flautist who was able to coax remarkably appealing music from it. Although its range was limited to less than an octave, its tonal quality was richer than a tin whistle and almost as mellow as a modern recorder.

Prof Atema had two other replica flutes, again made from the same type of bone as the originals. One was a copy of a 4,000-year-old flute made from a vulture bone, the second was made of deer bone to a design replicating an instrument more than 40,000 years old. Both of the originals were found in France.

Prof Atema described repairing and then playing the original vulture-bone flute, which also had decorative carvings and holes which would have allowed it to be carried on a string or thong around the neck. It had a two-octave range which could play complex musical compositions.

Studies of Neanderthal and more recent instruments could not give us a real insight into what kind of music these early hominids would have enjoyed, he said. Nor could scientists do more than speculate about how the instruments played a part in these early societies.