The Divje Babe flute is a cave bear femur pierced by spaced holes that was unearthed in 1995 during systematic archaeological excavations led by the Institute of Archaeology of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, at the Divje Babe I near Cerkno in northwestern Slovenia. It has been suggested that it was made by Neanderthals as a form of musical instrument, and became known as the Neanderthal flute. The artifact is on prominent public display in the National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana as a Neanderthal flute. As such, it would be the world's oldest known musical instrument. Like many other Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) finds that might reflect symbolic behavior and advanced cognitive abilities among Neanderthals, this find was met with severe criticism and rejection by a part of the scientific community. Finds of symbolic significance are of primary interest within Paleolithic research. Special attention is devoted to the discoveries that predate the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe about 40,000 years ago. Site and similar findings in Slovenia The location of the site is a horizontal cave, long and up to wide; it is above the Idrijca River, near Cerkno, and is accessible to visitors. Researchers working at the site have uncovered more than 600 archaeological items in at least ten levels, including twenty hearths and the skeletal remains of cave bears. According to the museum's statements, the flute has been associated with the "end of the middle Pleistocene" and with Neanderthals, about 55,000 years ago. In the 1920s and 1930s, professor Srečko Brodar (father of Mitja Brodar) discovered tens of bones with holes at another site in the Eastern Karawanks, but almost all of them were destroyed in an Allied air raid during World War II in Celje, where they were stored. Of those still preserved, the best known is a mandible of a cave bear with three holes in the mandibular canal. Since World War II, some other perforated bones have been found. These bones are preserved today at the National History Museum of Slovenia as well. According to Mitja Brodar, who discovered many of them, bones with holes have been dated only to the end of the Mousterian and the beginning of the Aurignacian. Bones with holes such as those found in the Potočka zijalka cave have been ascribed to modern human Cro-Magnon, and Mitja Brodar asserted that they are