The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute produces sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, flutes are edge-blown aerophones. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist or flutist.
In the History of Mesoamerica, the stage known as the Paleo-Indian period is the era in the scheme of Mesoamerican chronology which begins with the very first indications of human habitation within the Mesoamerican region, and continues until the general onset of the development of agriculture and other proto-civilisation traits. The conclusion of this stage may be assigned to approximately 9000 BP, and the transition to the succeeding Archaic period is not a well-defined one.
The Aurignacian is an archaeological industry of the Upper Paleolithic associated with Early European modern humans (EEMH) lasting from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic developed in Europe some time after the Levant, where the Emiran period and the Ahmarian period form the first periods of the Upper Paleolithic, corresponding to the first stages of the expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa. They then migrated to Europe and created the first European culture of modern humans, the Aurignacian.
Jiahu was the site of a Neolithic settlement based in the central plain of ancient China, near the Yellow River. It is located between the floodplains of the Ni River to the north, and the Sha River to the south, 22 km (14 mi) north of the modern city of Wuyang, Henan Province. Most archaeologists consider the site to be one of the earliest examples of the Peiligang culture. Settled around 7000 BC, the site was later flooded and abandoned around 5700 BC. The settlement was surrounded by a moat and covered a relatively large area of 55,000 square meters. At one time, it was "a complex, highly organized Chinese Neolithic society", home to at least 250 people and perhaps as many as 800.
Glen Canyon is a natural canyon carved by a 169.6-mile (272.9 km) length of the Colorado River, mostly in southeastern and south-central Utah, in the United States. Glen Canyon starts where Narrow Canyon ends, at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Dirty Devil River. A small part of the lower end of Glen Canyon extends into northern Arizona and terminates at Lee's Ferry, near the Vermilion Cliffs. Like the Grand Canyon farther downstream, Glen Canyon is part of the immense system of canyons carved by the Colorado River and its tributaries.
Washint is an end-blown wooden flute originally used in Ethiopia. Traditionally, Amharic musicians would pass on their oral history through song accompanied by the washint as well as the krar, a six stringed lyre, and the masenqo, a one string fiddle.
The Pyramid of the Sun is the largest building in Teotihuacan, and one of the largest in Mesoamerica. It is believed to have been constructed about 200 AD. Found along the Avenue of the Dead, in between the Pyramid of the Moon and the Ciudadela, and in the shadow of the mountain Cerro Gordo, the pyramid is part of a large complex in the heart of the city.
The Divje Babe flute, also called tidldibab, is a cave bear femur pierced by spaced holes that was unearthed in 1995 during systematic archaeological excavations led by the Institute of Archaeology of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, at the Divje Babe I near Cerkno in northwestern Slovenia. It has been suggested that it was made by Neanderthals as a form of musical instrument, and became known as the Neanderthal flute. The artifact is on prominent public display in the National Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana as a Neanderthal flute. As such, it would be the world's oldest known musical instrument. Like many other Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) finds that might reflect symbolic behavior and advanced cognitive abilities among Neanderthals, this find was met with severe criticism and rejection by a part of the scientific community. Finds of symbolic significance are of primary interest within Paleolithic research. Special attention is devoted to the discoveries that predate the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe about 40,000 years ago.
Oasisamerica is a term that was coined by Paul Kirchhoff and published in a 1954 article, and is used by some scholars, primarily Mexican anthropologists, for the broad cultural area defining pre-Columbian southwestern North America. It extends from modern-day Utah down to southern Chihuahua, and from the coast on the Gulf of California eastward to the Río Bravo river valley. Its name comes from its position in relationship with the similar regions of Mesoamerica and mostly nomadic Aridoamerica. The term Greater Southwest is often used to describe this region by American anthropologists.
Southwestern archaeology is a branch of archaeology concerned with the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico. This region was first occupied by hunter-gatherers, and thousands of years later by advanced civilizations, such as the Ancestral Puebloans, the Hohokam, and the Mogollon.
Ventana Cave is an archaeological site in southern Arizona. It is located on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. The cave was excavated under the direction of Emil Haury by teams led by Julian Hayden in 1942, and in 1941 by a team led by Wilfrid C Bailey, one of Emil Haury's graduate students. The deepest artifacts from Ventana Cave were recovered from a layer of volcanic debris that also contained Pleistocene horse, Burden's pronghorn, tapir, sloth, and other extinct and modern species. A projectile point from the volcanic debris layer was compared to the Folsom Tradition and later to the Clovis culture, but the assemblage was peculiar enough to warrant a separate name – the Ventana Complex. Radiocarbon dates from the volcanic debris layer indicated an age of about 11,300 BP.
During regular archaeological excavations, several flutes that date to the European Upper Paleolithic were discovered in caves in the Swabian Alb region of Germany. Dated and tested independently by two laboratories, in England and Germany, the artifacts are authentic products of the Aurignacian archaeological culture. The Aurignacian flutes were created between 43,000 and 35,000 years ago. The flutes, made of bone and ivory, represent the earliest known musical instruments and provide unmistakable evidence of prehistoric music.
The Basketmaker III Era also called the "Modified Basketmaker" period, was the third period in which Ancient Pueblo People were cultivating food, began making pottery and living in more sophisticated clusters of pit-house dwellings. Hunting was easier with the adoption of the bow and arrow.
The Basketmaker culture of the pre-Ancestral Puebloans began about 1500 BC and continued until about AD 750 with the beginning of the Pueblo I Era. The prehistoric American southwestern culture was named "Basketmaker" for the large number of baskets found at archaeological sites of 3,000 to 2,000 years ago.
The Archaic–Early Basketmaker Era was an Archaic cultural period of ancestors to the Ancient Pueblo People. They were distinguished from other Archaic people of the Southwest by their basketry which was used to gather and store food. They became reliant on wild seeds, grasses, nuts, and fruit for food and changed their movement patterns and lifestyle by maximizing the edible wild food and small game within a geographical region. Manos and metates began to be used to process seeds and nuts. With the extinction of megafauna, hunters adapted their tools, using spears with smaller projectile points and then atlatl and darts. Simple dwellings made of wood, brush and earth provided shelter.
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. They are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara tradition, which developed from the Picosa culture. The people and their archaeological culture are often referred to as Anasazi, meaning "ancient enemies", as they were called by Navajo. Contemporary Puebloans object to the use of this term, with some viewing it as derogatory.
Minanha is a Maya archeological site located on the North Vaca Plateau of west-central Belize. The Minanha area is divided into three tiers; the Epicenter or Epicentral Court Complex, the Site Core, and the greater Minanha community. The Epicenter is approximately 9.5 hectares in size and consists of a raised elite residential and ritual northern acropolis and a lower component to the south, which is thought to have been for administrative, ritual, and residential features.
Pueblo pottery are ceramic objects made by the indigenous Pueblo people and their antecedents, the Ancestral Puebloans and Mogollon cultures in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. For centuries, pottery has been central to pueblo life as a feature of ceremonial and utilitarian usage. The clay is locally sourced, most frequently handmade, and fired traditionally in an earthen pit. These items take the form of storage jars, canteens, serving bowls, seed jars, and ladles, serving the needs of daily life. Some utility wares were undecorated except from simple corrugations or marks made with a stick or fingernail, however many examples for centuries were painted with abstract or representational motifs. Some pueblos made effigy vessels, fetishes or figurines such as Cochiti Pueblo. During modern times, pueblo pottery was produced specifically as an art form to serve an economic function. This role is not dissimilar to prehistoric times when pottery was traded throughout the Southwest, and in historic times after contact with the Spanish colonialists.
William D. Lipe, also known as Bill Lipe, is an archaeologist known for his work in the American Southwest and his Conservation Model. Lipe has contributed to Cultural Resource Management (CRM) and public archaeology. In addition to this, he has done work with the Glen Canyon Project, the Dolores Archaeological Program, and the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.
The Ketef Hinnom scrolls, also described as Ketef Hinnom amulets, are the oldest surviving texts currently known from the Hebrew Bible, dated to 600 BC. The text, written in the Paleo-Hebrew script, is from the Book of Numbers in the Hebrew Bible, and has been described as "one of most significant discoveries ever made" for biblical studies.
