Graeme Lawson: Sound Tracks—The Archaeology of Music and Ancient Instruments

Summary

Archaeologist and musician Graeme Lawson discusses his book Soundtracks, which traces humanity's musical past through instruments recovered from caves, graves and tombs, from 40,000-year-old bone flutes to Chinese bronze bells. He explains how microscopic wear patterns, tuning evidence and replicas reveal how ancient people made and used music, including to alter mood and perception. Host Cliff also previews his own more speculative ideas about Maya archaeoacoustics, altered states of consciousness, and transoceanic migration.

Key takeaways

• 1A roughly 40,000-year-old vulture-bone flute found in Germany is presented as evidence of very early human interest in music.
• 2Host Cliff claims Maya sites such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Palenque were built as acoustic resonators to induce altered states without drugs. His upcoming book 'The Maya Controversy' argues the Paleo-Maya migrated by sea from Europe, Africa and Asia.
• 3One of King Tutankhamun's trumpets fell apart in the 1930s when a British Army bugler brought in by the BBC blew it with his own mouthpiece inserted.
• 4The Seikilos inscription, a Greek song with musical notation, was used as a plant stand by railway engineer Mr. Purser's family near Izmir. Its melody reportedly reappears in early Christian chant.
• 5The tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (around 500 BCE) held 65 bronze bells, each able to sound two distinct pitches. The bells carry inscriptions describing their tuning theory.
• 6A waterlogged 6th-century grave with a preserved lyre was found in Trossingen, Germany, beside Matthias Hohner's harmonica factory.
• 7Lawson co-edited 'Music and Politics in the Ancient World' (2019, Berlin), available as a free download.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

Thank you. Thank you. You're listening to the sound of a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal bird bone flute that was found in Germany about a decade ago. It's actually a vulture bone that was shaped into a flute. And the artist took the bone and reproduced it so that it's exactly the way it was found. And he devised that little song and added a little drum to kind of go with it. So that is fairly amazing if you want to consider the great age. 40,000 years ago, It looks like we were interested in music as far back as that time period, if not earlier. I have seen flutes and cymbals and drums in Egyptian museums that are dated to even earlier than that, 50,000 to 80,000 years. Muhammad Ibrahim, who we've had on this show a number of times, has also found very early musical instruments in the desert, Egyptian desert. So it looks like we were interested in tunes and rhythms. Hey, this is Cliff, your host of Earth Ancients, and today we are featuring an archaeologist who has studied ancient ancient musical instruments, and has written a fairly comprehensive book on different instruments down through the ages. ...

Excerpt from Earth Ancients, Oct 24, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.