Dem dry bones play after 20,000 years

Press, 25 November 1980, Page 15

Dem dry bones play after 20,000 years

By MICHAEL BINYON, of “The Times.” through NZPA

Moscow 'Melpdiya, the Soviet recording company, has released an unusual recording. An ensemble from Kiev has produced a rhythmic piece of music playedbn : instruments fashioned .more than 20.000 .years'' ago from mammoth bones. ■■The ; stone-age :_instruments, still resounding with a fine timbre, were discovered by archaeologists at a site near Kiev recently. Six palaeolithic drums, cymbals, and other prototype percussion instruments had been carved out of shoulder blade, hip, lower jaw, tusk, shank, and skull of a mammoth. They were piled in a ditch. For some time scientists wondered what they were. They summoned forensic doctors, restorers at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, and even criminologists, who finally supported the thesis that the old bones were indeed from one of the world’s first orchestras.

As proof, they pointed

to the smooth parts of the bones where regular drumbeats to produce particular sounds had worn th6m. They were at first afraid to try playing the bones in case they shattered at the first blow, but they were resilient.

. Tire music produced a curiously hypnotic rhythm .which the archaeologists maintain testifies to their use in . ritualistic dances and ceremonies round the open fire that followed a successful dav’s hunting. ' . : 1 Each bone produced a distinctive sound: the tusk was like a xylophone and the skull like a drum. Near the bones were found plate-shaped castinets carved from mammth tusks which dancers probably wore during the ceremonies. -S The Kiev Academy of Sciences decided to allow modern man the chance to listen to his ancestors’ favourite hits. After a few experiments with the ■ orchestration. a long-playing record has been produced and will soon go on sale in the Soviet Union, "Pravda” has announced. There is indeed music in "dem dry bones.”