artefact or simply naturally altered bone. Upper Palaeolithic flutes made from the limb bones of mammals show clear traces of artificial creation of holes which were carved or drilled with stone tools. In flutes made from thin, delicate bird bones, the holes were made by grinding the bone cortex. The edge of the holes on the Neanderthal flute differs from those on Upper Palaeolithic flutes and shows no conventional signs of human manufacture (i.e., cut marks). In addition, both ends of the Neanderthal flute show damage typical of gnawing by carnivores. The excavation leader Ivan Turk suggested two possible explanations shortly after the discovery: An artefact or a gnawed bone pierced with teeth. According to the first explanation, this find would be the oldest musical instrument indisputably attributed to Neanderthals. The explanation that the find is a bone gnawed and pierced by a carnivore has been unhesitatingly accepted by some scientists. Their investigations of the find were distinctively one-sided and, with a one exception, contained no experiments. A critical review of their reasoning was presented by Ivan Turk et al. To clarify the origin of the holes, Ivan Turk and his colleagues experimentally investigated whether the holes might have been made by carnivores or human. Experimental testing of the carnivore origin of the holes Besides prevailing cave bears, rare large carnivores could hypothetically have made holes in the bones at Divje babe I. These are brown bear, cave lion, leopard and wolf, which together comprise less than 0.1% of all large mammal remains excavated at Divje babe I. No cave hyena skeletal remains, digested bones, or coprolites were found to prove its presence at this site. To test the hypothesis that carnivores caused the holes in the bone, metal dental casts of cave bear, wolf and hyena (which was the main cause of damage to the bones in the caves where it was present) dentition were made. The casts were used to pierce juvenile and adult fresh brown bear femurs. Experimental piercing showed that the two complete holes are comparable in shape and size only to those caused by the canine teeth of a bear. As for the bear bite, however, their orientation is problematic. Namely, the canines of bears have an oval cross-section in the labial-lingual direction. Since the two complete holes in the Neanderthal flute are slightly oval in the direction of the longitudinal axis of the femur,