article_snippet.sent: It was heralded as the world’s oldest musical instrument; a bone with two holes in It seemingly made by Neanderthals to serenade their companions.
article_snippet.sent: But now a study says a study’s not an instrument at all
article_snippet.sent: The research suggests historians have been fooled by these phoney objects - and, in fact, all such ‘instruments’ attributed to Neanderthals are simply chew toys of animals.
article_snippet.sent: The latest analysis was conducted by Dr Cajus Diedrich from the Paleo-Logic Independent Institute of Geosciences.
article_snippet.sent: In a paper published in the Royal Society of Open Science, A researcher took a look at several ‘musical instruments’ that had been attributed to Neanderthals.
article_snippet.sent: Neanderthals may have created and worn the world's first jewellery 130,000 years ago, according to scientists.
article_snippet.sent: The findings add to evidence that Neanderthals were not the slow-witted and primitive creatures Neanderthals are often portrayed as.
article_snippet.sent: These are not instruments, nor human made, but products of the most important cave bear scavengers of Europe, hyenas,Dr Diedrich wrote.
article_snippet.sent: The latest analysis says that many bones found in caves can simply be attributed to animals around 30,000 years ago, rather than Neanderthals.
article_snippet.sent: Shown is an exhibit of the life of a Neanderthal family in a cave in the Neanderthal Museum in the northern town of Krapina in Croatia .
article_snippet.sent: ‘Neanderthal flutes’ were discovered in Slovenia in the 1920s and, since then, many others have been identified.
article_snippet.sent: Sadly for those who thought Neanderthals might have played music in this way to one another, though, it seems The latest analysis may have been wrong.
article_snippet.sent: What’s more, Dr Diedrich also said that most of the ‘bone flutes’ do not actually date from Neanderthal times - 200,000 to 30,000 years ago.
article_snippet.sent: Rather, Dr Diedrich says they can more closely be attributed to the Aurignacian culture 38,000 to 29,000 years ago - sometimes said to be the first modern humans in Europe, owing to they grasp of using tools.
article_snippet.sent: All cave bear pseudo-bone flutes are not dated to Neanderthal Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian layers, but instead, if possible to date, to Late Palaeolithic, Aurignacian/Gravettian layers.
highlights_snippet.sent: Researcher claims all such instruments were made by hyenas, not Neanderthals .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: And the bones do not even originate from Neanderthal times .