(By the way nice name there)
>Glenn,
>
>This web site is supposed to back up your statement? All I found was
>the following rather ambivalent quote:
>
>"Since similar artifacts date from the upper palaeolithic
>exclusively and are believed to be musical instruments, the
>possibility that the find could be the oldest musical instrument
>found in Europe cannot be ruled out. Of course, it must be first
>proved that the holes are manmade, and in this particular case
>it would probably be Neanderthal man who was responsible. The
>next likely explanation is that the holes were made by some
>large carnivore even though traces of teeth on the bone have
>not yet been discovered."
>
First, I am pleased that you actually went to look. Lots of people don't even
do that.
>Not to mention the fact that the bone fragment pictured there
>appears to have been flat and solid, and not hollow or tube-like as
>I would expect of a wind instrument. Plus the holes appear to go
>all the way through the bone.
>
There were 4 holes all in a line on the front face. There is a broken hole on
the left, two complete holes, and a broken hole on the right.
Now, the flute is not flat. In the complete hole on the left, you can see
the other side of the bone's interior through the hole. The rough interior
which sticks out at the left can be followed from the far left to the left
complete hole. The back part of the bone is missing in the complete hole on
the right side. If you look through the leftmost complete hole you will see a
shadow of a vertical crack in the interior of the back of the bone. The fact
that light is able to come in from the side, tells you that this is not flat.
Look at the details.
This is a bone, a bear bone not a reed and what do you expect--a machined
steel flute? And after 45,000 years, both the machined steel flute and you are
not going to be looking very good. Ancient man made flutes out of bones. A
flute made from a bird bone can be seen in _The First Humans_ American Museum
of Natural History, ed Goran Burenhult, 1993, p. 28. This one, from much
younger, has the whistle part still attached.
Turk answers the question about the possibility that the holes are due to a
carnivore. Fact: there are no other carnivore tooth cut marks. When a
carnivore bites a bone, the upper teeth are on one side of the bone and the
lower teeth are on the other. As the jaws exert pressure, the teeth dig into
both sides of the bone. Since Turk says that there are no other tooth marks,
it seems difficult to say that the holes are due to animal teeth. He makes
this statement as an effort to try to come up with other alternatives.
Fact: Animal jaws are CURVED. Their teeth curve with the jaws. Also their
teeth are rarely circular. Even my canines are not circular yet the holes are
circular. No normal animal could have punched the holes. For an animal to have
punched four, nearly circular holes in a bone all of which are in a straight
line, leaving no marks on the other side of the bone, would require an animal
with only one circular tooth in his mouth and he bit the bone at four separate
locations without rotating the bone.
As to proving the holes to be manmade, I can assure you that a microscopic
examination of the holes will be made looking for drill marks. This will be
in the form of spiral or circular incisions into the wall of the hole. (Take
anything you drill with a modern drill bit and examine it under a microscope
and you will see spiral and circular incisions into the wall. These are due
to tiny imprecisions in the drill bit.) No tooth punctures like that. In
fact, teeth do not punch holes out of bone at all, they crush the bone.
Is this animal made? no
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm