Slovenia

The 45 000 year-old Moustarian Bone Flute is the earliest preserved musicial instrument in the world. It was discovered in the Divje Babe cave in Northwestern Slovenia. In 1995, Drago Kunej and Ivan Turk found a flute-like perforated thighbone of a young cave bear at the Divje Babe cave site in Slovenia. The finding originates from the final phase of themiddle Paleolithic period, about 35,000 – 50,000 years ago. Following the arguments of Kunej and Turk (2000), it seems to represent the oldest bone flute preserved up until now. It is beyond the scope of this paper to go into the discussion whether the finding is a flute or just a bone pierced by a carnivore in an abnormal way (a review on this topic is given in Kunejand Turk 2000).