Oxford University in the UK has announced that researchers from that school and Germany's University of Tübingen have determined the age on the world's oldest musical instruments: a collection of flutes, made of mammoth ivory and bird bones. Other bones found at the same level of excavation have been radiocarbon dated as 40,000 years old.

The site at Geißenklösterle Cave in the Swabian Jura area in southern Germany is "widely believed to have been occupied by some of first modern humans to arrive in Europe." So from the very beginning, it seems, we were obliged by something in our natures to get down on it.

The process of dating the instruments was outlined in a paper for the Journal of Human Evolution. The Oxford team, led by lead author Professor Tom Higham, used "improved ultrafiltration method designed to remove contamination from the collagen preserved in the bones."

The dating has established that the Aurignacian, a "culture linked with early modern humans and dating to the Upper Paleolithic period," began 2,000 to 3,000 years earlier than originally thought, 42,000 and 43,000 years ago. The Geißenklösterle Cave site predates are the "earliest for the Aurignacian and predate equivalent sites from Italy, France, England and other regions."

"Geißenklösterle is one of several caves in the region that has produced important examples of personal ornaments, figurative art, mythical imagery and musical instruments," said excavator Dr. Nick Conard of the University of Tübingen.

One of the important issues surrounding this new dating is that it proves humans were in the Danube valley prior to a great climactic shift that lowered the temperatures significantly.

"The question," said Higham, "is what effect this downturn might have had on the people in Europe at the time."

Perhaps the creation of instrumental music was one of those effects. Perhaps the ungovernable shift inspired a ritual need that musical instruments satisfied.