What Is the Oldest Musical Instrument Ever Found?

The oldest known musical instrument is the Divje Babe flute, a fragment of cave bear femur discovered in Slovenia and estimated to be between 50,000 and 60,000 years old — predating the arrival of modern humans in Europe and potentially crafted by Neanderthals.

The Discovery at Divje Babe Cave

In 1995, Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Turk uncovered a small bone fragment at the Divje Babe cave site in northwestern Slovenia. The bone came from the femur of a Ursus spelaeus — the cave bear — a species that went extinct roughly 27,000 years ago. What made the find extraordinary were four holes, carefully aligned along the shaft of the bone. Researchers noted that these holes correspond to notes on a diatonic scale — the same foundational musical framework used in virtually all Western music today. The implication was staggering: someone, tens of thousands of years ago, may have understood musical intervals.

Could Neanderthals Really Have Made Music?

If the Divje Babe flute is genuinely a handcrafted instrument, it changes everything we thought we knew about Neanderthal cognition. The artifact predates the next oldest confirmed musical instruments — the Swabian Jura flutes found in Germany, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory — by at least 10,000 years. Those German flutes are attributed to anatomically modern humans. The Divje Babe flute, by contrast, comes from a period and location where only Neanderthals are known to have lived.

That would mean a species with a fundamentally different brain architecture independently developed music — a capability long considered a uniquely modern human trait. If true, it would force a major reassessment of Neanderthal intelligence, symbolic thinking, and cultural complexity.

The Skeptics: Teeth, Not Tools?

Not everyone is convinced the Divje Babe bone is a flute at all. Researcher Francesco d’Errico and several colleagues have argued that the holes are consistent with puncture marks left by the teeth of carnivores — specifically cave bears or hyenas — gnawing on a discarded bone. Under this interpretation, the aligned holes are a coincidence of predator feeding behavior, not evidence of musical intent.

The debate hinges on microscopic analysis of the hole edges and the spacing of the perforations. Proponents of the flute interpretation point to the regularity and alignment of the holes as too precise to be random. Skeptics counter that carnivore puncture patterns can mimic deliberate drilling when bones are chewed at certain angles. Decades later, the scientific community remains genuinely divided.

What the Bone Tells Us Either Way

Whether or not the Divje Babe bone is a crafted instrument, its existence sits at the center of one of paleoanthropology’s most compelling debates: when and where did music begin? Music is considered a marker of abstract thought, social bonding, and symbolic communication. If Neanderthals were making flutes, they possessed a level of cognitive sophistication that blurs the line between them and us.

Even the skeptical scenario is revealing — early humans and Neanderthals were living in environments populated by large, bone-crushing carnivores, and the remnants of those interactions can look, eerily, like art.

Where Is the Flute Today?

The Divje Babe flute is currently on permanent display at the National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana, where it has become one of the institution’s most visited artifacts. Ljubljana itself is a compact, walkable capital city in central Slovenia — making the museum an accessible stop for anyone traveling through the region.

The artifact is small enough to fit in a palm. The question it carries is large enough to reshape human history.