Let's assume the thing is a flute. It's been reconstructed and plays beautifully. The odds of a hyena making such a thing with its teeth are in silly territory; and we have other similar flutes that are nearly as old (relatively speaking).
Given that, the fact that they use a scale so resonant with humans that it is still in very popular use sixty thousand years later - that's incredible. I felt the article drastically undersold the awesomeness of that, showing far too much restraint.
Have you seen the video where Bobby McFerrin leads a whole crowd to sync perfectly with each other, without rehearsal, thanks to the pentatonic scale [0]? That's spiritual stuff; it's 'sophisticated artistic expression'. That's the same scale that was (almost certainly) intentionally used to make this flute.
Here's a great comment from that video:
> What Bobby is doing here is transcendent. He gives an audience four notes of a five note scale, with no context, with no explanation, and the audience is intuitively able to grasp what the 5th note of the scale is. Not only that, the audience is able to intuitively understand the way the scale continues, above and below the range they were given. The fact that Bobby says this works with audience anywhere in the world speaks to a deep cross-cultural piece of the human experience and how we understand music and ourselves. Something is happening at the fundamental level here and I think it's lost on some people how truly profound this is.
Neanderthals intentionally crafted sophisticated flutes to play this precise scale 60,000 years ago? That's profound alright.
It's also physics, those notes sound good next to each other because mathematically their frequencies are resonant (simple relationships like 3/2 or 5/4 as opposed to, say, 729/512 of a tritone).
I'm not saying that it's not awesome that this scale is still in use (it is) or that hearing that flute doesn't make me emotional (it does), just noting that there is a reason why.
Still, it seems very likely those Neanderthals 60k years ago were playing music for all the same reasons we do, even making efforts to understand the principles enough to make clever instruments.
Maybe the Neanderthals even knew about such ratios. It's discoverable by playing with string, or even plants.
If you just blow into a tube, it will resonate and make a sound. It's not far from that to notice that different length tubes make different notes. Eventually someone found that blowing in a tube with a hole in the side will change the note if one blocks the hole with a finger.
By then, one is off and running with developing a workable flute.
There’s a bit more to the story than just harmonic overtones.
If you stack fifths on top of each other you also get the major pentatonic scale, like going from noon to 4 o’clock on the circle of fifths.
If you keep going around you basically spell out the major scale, other than the sharp 4, and this is the foundation of Russell’s Lydian chromatic scale.
The 5/3 ration of the fifth note (A in the C major pentatonic scale) is already evidence that there is some kind of stacked tonality.
So yes, it is still physics, but there is definitely a level of complexity above just simple ratios against a root note!
You can take the harmonic series farther up, specifically in the range between the 8th and 16th overtones, and get a scale that is very close to containing the major pentatonic, close to a C7#4, but it sounds a little off outside of equal temperament!
Given that, the fact that they use a scale so resonant with humans that it is still in very popular use sixty thousand years later - that's incredible. I felt the article drastically undersold the awesomeness of that, showing far too much restraint.
Have you seen the video where Bobby McFerrin leads a whole crowd to sync perfectly with each other, without rehearsal, thanks to the pentatonic scale [0]? That's spiritual stuff; it's 'sophisticated artistic expression'. That's the same scale that was (almost certainly) intentionally used to make this flute.
Here's a great comment from that video:
> What Bobby is doing here is transcendent. He gives an audience four notes of a five note scale, with no context, with no explanation, and the audience is intuitively able to grasp what the 5th note of the scale is. Not only that, the audience is able to intuitively understand the way the scale continues, above and below the range they were given. The fact that Bobby says this works with audience anywhere in the world speaks to a deep cross-cultural piece of the human experience and how we understand music and ourselves. Something is happening at the fundamental level here and I think it's lost on some people how truly profound this is.
Neanderthals intentionally crafted sophisticated flutes to play this precise scale 60,000 years ago? That's profound alright.
0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk