#paleolithic era

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Quest for Fire (1981)

[lifewithaview]

William Hartnell in Doctor Who (1963) The Cave of Skulls

S1E2

the Doctor and Susan Foreman bring their new companions backwards in time to the paleolithic era. They are captured by a tribe of cave dwellers and discover that two of the them, Za and Kal, are competing with one another over leadership of the tribe. Kal discovers that the Doctor knows how to make fire and tries to force him to show him the secret so that he can assert his dominance over the others.

*One of the actresses hired to play a cave woman misunderstood her part; she thought she was going to be modeling furs for Dr. No (1962), the first James Bond film, rather than wearing rags. When she learned she was to have some of her teeth blacked up, she left the set and never returned.

[greek-mythos-retold]

No thoughts, head empty, just stone age finger flutings

[hildegard-von-bingen]

Although these deceptively simple ancient flutes are almost all that survives of Paleolithic music, acoustic scientists have recently made an extraordinary discovery about the lifesaving importance of music to cave-dwellers of this period.  In 2008, researchers from the University of Paris ascertained that the Chauvet paintings – which lie within huge, inaccessible, pitch-black networks of tunnels – are located at the points of greatest resonance in the cave network.  From these special points, then, human voices would carry, echoing and ricocheting throughout the whole subterranean system.  It has been suggested that people would sing not just as an adjunct to communal ritual, but more crucially as a bat-like form of sonar to provide location bearings in the vast labyrinth of the cave – rather like a musical SatNav.

The Story of Music – Howard Goodall

[theartofmany]

“This scene shows the beginning of  the Paleolithic Era, and reveals that, by the usage of tools, man could stop being a victim of the world to become an active element, who has the power of action over nature.“ From Youtube channel Art History: 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Dawn of Man Masterpiece with a very shocking soundtrack Just, wow...

[academish]

brown + paleolithic & neolithic eras notes

[autodidact-adventures]

Music History (Part 1): Prehistoric Music

There are four ways we can learn about music history: 1) from physical remains (e.g. instruments & performing spaces); 2) from visual images; 3) from writings about music; and 4) from music itself, whether preserved in notation, recordings, or in oral traditions.  The earliest evidence of music is from the first two.

The Stone Age began about 2.5 million years ago, and ended in about 3300 BC (in the Near East).  It is divided into three periods – the Paleolithic (ending about 9,600 BC), Mesolithic, and Neolithic.  Not all regions have a Mesolithic period (e.g. the Near East).

During the Stone Age, people made whistles and flutes out of animal bones.  The oldest flutes are from the Geißenklösterle Cave in Germany, dating to around 42-43,000 BC (during the Paleolithic).  They are like tiny penny whistles, with a limited range and simple sound.  One is made from woolly mammoth ivory, and the other two from mute swan bone. (One of the swan flutes is made from the radius, a bone in the forearm.)

Mammoth-ivory flute.

Swan-bone flute.

There are also Paleolithic cave paintings that seem to show instruments being played.

The Neolithic period began around 7,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent.  Pottery flutes, drums and rattles were common.  Wall-paintings in Çatalhöyük (Turkey) from the 5000's BC show musicians playing drums, to accompany dancers and also to drive out game for the hunt.

The Bronze Age followed the Stone Age, and it was about 3,300 – 1,200 BC in the Near East.  People began to make metal instruments, including horns, bells, cymbals, jingles and rattles.  Plucked string instruments also began to appear – few have survived, but they are represented on stone carvings.

[mazingamazingly]

Melka Kunture Ethiopia: How 1.6 Million-Year-Old Acheulean Tools Rewrote Human History

Melka Kunture Ethiopia contains 1.6 million years of continuous human occupation across 23 distinct archaeological layers—the longest unbroken prehistoric record on Earth. Acheulean hand axes required 50–100+ precisely calculated stone strikes, proving early humans possessed abstract planning and co

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