Prehistoric Music

What is Prehistoric Music?

First, if we go by what the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the word prehistoric is: Relating to or denoting the period before written records:prehistoric man, then Prehistoric Music would be what we find as evidence relating to the presence of music before any written records of music. What I would consider to be evidence of the presence of music, without a written form of music, would be an image (hieroglyph, cave paintings), artifacts (excavated musical instruments), or oral tradition.

Cave Paintings

A good example of music and cave paintings are among those we find at Tassili n'Ajjer. Located in Algeria, some of these cave paintings can be dated to about 6000BC. Among them, we can find some paintings that depict what appears to be cavemen dancing, such as the following painting I found on the website http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/North_Africa/North_African_History.htm

I also found information about Tassili n’Ajjer at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/179.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

In 2001, National Geographic News reported on a finding in Abu Sir by a team of Czech archeologists where they uncovered a 4,300 year old hieroglyph of singers and musicians playing the harp. They don’t show any pictures of the said hieroglyphs, and I couldn’t find any online…but they did use the image of another hieroglyph which is comparable which I’ve copied for you here:

The National Geographic story includes interviews. You can read it here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/02/0213_1stlovesong.html