Flute from Divje babe

The bone flute was discovered in 1995 during lengthy systematic archaeological investigations of Divje babe cave near Idrija. The cave is located below the north-eastern edge of the Šebrelje plateau, with the entrance on a steep slope high above the Idrijca river. It served as a lair for cave bear during the last glaciation, but was also used by people - first Neanderthals and then Cro-Magnons. The flute was lying beside a hearth, together with Neanderthal stone tools. It was made from the tubular part of the femur of a juvenile cave bear. It has been proved experimentally that the holes were manmade and not the result of animals gnawing it. The flute was recently redated to sixty thousand years ago, on the basis of electronic spin resonance analysis of bear teeth found in the same layer. In archaeological terms, this was the end of the Middle Palaeolithic, and in cultural terms the time of the Neanderthals. They appeared on the territory of Slovenia about two hundred thousand years ago and died out from forty to thirty thousand years before the present, when the more aggressive Cro-Magnons gradually supplanted them. The flute from Divje babe is the oldest Palaeolithic flute known to date worldwide and the first that was certainly made by Neanderthals. Its discovery sheds new light on their artistic capacities and sensitivities.