Oldest playable instrument

Archaeologists uncovered a 9,000-year-old Chinese Bone Flute and managed to play a tune on it. The flute, which is 23.1 cm (9 in) long has seven holes and is made from the leg bone of a red crowned crane. It was found at Jiahu, the site of an ancient farming village on the Yellow River flood plain, China.

Its tone scale indicates a carefully selected scale, but it has not been possible to conclude whether this was related to the six tone Quing Shan scale, or the seven tone Xia Shi scale, both documented in china 6000 years later. Nevertheless it is said that the scale indicates that Neo-lithic musicians of the seventh millennium BC could not just play single notes but music. The site was found in 1962 but was only recently excavated by a Chinese team led by Juzhong Zhang of the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Henan Province.