found Upper Paleolithic bone flute with drilled holes from the open-air
loess site of Grubgraben in Austria also has both ends fragmented,at
least one in a similar manner to our find (Einwögerer and Käfer
1998:abb.2).Most other Paleolithic examples of flutes have also been
preserved more or less fragmented.It is necessary to stress that in all
cited examples the damage is of Pleistocene age.It is not possible to dis-
tinguish what damaged an object from what produced it when faced with
deciding among various possibilities in specific cases.
The main question raised by archeologists is who pierced the bone on
the flatter posterior side? The question is answered only through exper-
imentation or through new similar finds of the same or greater age.
Three answers are possible:the bone was pierced by some beast with
teeth,by a human with a stone tool,or perhaps a combination of the two.
If the holes were made by a beast,we know why it was done.If they were
made by a human we are faced with another question.Why? To make
a flute,or for some other purpose? Before writing this chapter,Turk
undertook extensive experiments with bronze casts of the jawbones of
wolves and hyenas and imitation tools from chert,with which he pierced
analogous bones of recent brown bear and used them as comparative
material for the original.He also reproduced specific damage to the tools
that were created by chipping the holes.The results,presented at an inter-
national symposium held in Slovenia in May 1998,are briefly summa-
rized here.
Since the site was above all a carnivore den,as were most sites from
this time in Europe (Gamble 1986;Stiner 1995),we should consider some
of the animals that fed on bones and bone marrow,primarily wolves and
hyenas.The former are relatively richly represented in the site fauna,but
of hyenas there is no trace,neither directly among faunal remains nor
indirectly among the mass of bone fragments that were characteristic of
the activity of hyenas in caves during the last Glacial in general
(d’Errico and Villa 1997),and still less in the layer in which the pierced
bone was found.The main candidate for piercing the bone is therefore
wolf (Canis lupus),which is frequently found in Slovene Paleolithic sites
before the peak of the last Glacial,before around 20,000 years ago.Even
at that time it probably often stayed in the vicinity of humans and fed
on their leftovers,or both used the same sources of food in cave dens,
where cave bears perished.
Bearing in mind constraints of the laws of physics (i.e.,biomechanics)
and normal chewing behavior,both carnivores could pierce the bone
almost exclusively with their carnassials (upper fourth premolar and
lower first molar in the wolf) and precarnassials (upper and lower third
premolar in the hyena) in the course of chewing.These teeth are pointed
and,in addition to canines,the strongest teeth in the jaw,and like other241 New Perspectives on the Beginnings of Music