How was MUSIC in PREHISTORY

Image: Ancient World

Today we enjoy and study music as the vast art that it is, we know an impressive variety of styles, instruments and techniques. How fascinating is think about how it all started, to realize that we have such richness in art thanks to centuries of evolution and to people who have done things out of motivation and concern to invent and express themselves through creation.

Let us remember that music is understood from a physical phenomenon of sound, which in turn is related to mathematics, so to a large extent Part of the advancement in music is influenced by curiosity towards many factors that later contribute to their becoming art. Thus, the history of music is related to the discovery of what surrounds us and our creativity to transform it into something more expressive.

In this article by a teacher we will talk about music in prehistory, of the beginnings of this art and its evolution.

Index

1. Prehistory through musical instruments
instagram story viewer
2. Origin of music in Prehistory
3. Characteristics of prehistoric music
4. Musical instruments in prehistory
5. Music in the Metal Age

We call that period of humanity Prehistory before there was written material with information from that time. Thanks to research and studies we can know about the life of the humans who inhabited this period, including their way of life, their habits and of course, social and cultural activities such as music.

Since there are no texts to obtain this information, primitive musical instruments have been searched and found that provide us with clues. In terms of dates, it has been established that the prehistoric period is understood from 50,000 years ago to 500 AD.

Image: Celia Batista

The exact origin of music in prehistory is unknown, however we can infer that everything must have started with elements that were within easy reach of the people of the time and with this we conclude that everything should have started with human voice and percussion, using the body or elements in the environment.

We also know one thing and that is that music was used to accompany events or happenings such as hunting, warfare, funeral rituals, and dance parties. Since music is a manifestation and a method of expression, people in prehistory associated it with life and nature, in contrast, silence was related to death.

Image: Slideplayer

Since there are no recordings or scores of the music of that time, the only way to get closer to how prehistoric music sounded is through the study of indigenous communities that their customs have not changed drastically and that they maintain characteristics in common with the ancestors of that time.

What we can know is the importance, meaning and usefulness that he had music in Prehistory as a social and expressive phenomenon. Music has an origin related to language and intellect because after all it is a method of expression.

Another important link is that of music and magic, nature or religion. It is known that many current communities use music as a form of communication with deities or higher beings, also as a method of defense against evil spirits or diseases, so we can infer that in prehistory music was also used for these purposes.

An important element for the evolution of music is related to ingenuity: the invention of tools with a specific objective. We can know that from this, people began to create instruments to produce sound, experimenting with materials and the shape of the instrument. As we mentioned earlier, people used what was available to them, this includes materials such as stone, wood, leather, ivory andanimal bones.

By inference, it is known that the oldest instruments must have been of percussion, since it requires less engineering. However, it is difficult to find them because most of them were probably made of wood and leather, materials that do not keep well over time. In the case of the stone, the marks of blows are very ambiguous to establish if it really was a musical instrument.

The oldest musical instruments

• The oldest instrument recognized by science is a flute made of swan bone, from about 36,000 before history. Many instruments found are from the wind category, including flutes and whistles. It is believed that apart from a musical instrument, these objects were used to make calls.
• Other instruments include the use of horns, conches and bones of other even larger animals, such as bears and mammoths. As for other types of instruments, objects such as rattles, objects filled with seeds to make sounds that would resemble what we know today as “maracas”.
• We can also mention that thanks to the characteristics of some objects not related to music, discoveries of sound could arise. It is the case of bow used for hunting, consisting of a piece of wood with a taut rope. This was probably the beginning of the string instruments, by experimenting with the tension and the length of it and its relationship with the sound it produced.

Image: SmBosque

Finally, an important step in prehistoric music happens in the Metal Age. With new materials such as copper, bronze and iron, new possibilities arose for creating instruments. An example of this is the “carnix” a kind of vertical trumpet of Celtic origin made of bronze, used in war to intimidate the enemy.

It is always very curious to ask ourselves about the origins of something with which we live our day to day, in this case music. The truth is that we can know that since the beginning of time, humanity has had two essential qualities for the creation of art: curiosity and creativity.

If you liked reading this article by a PROFESSOR and have discovered things about music in Prehistory, We invite you to leave a comment and continue exploring the rest of the articles we have to follow learning.

Image: The Country

If you want to read more articles similar to Music in Prehistory: summary, we recommend that you enter our category of Music history.