Illustration © Tom Moore www.artsi.org

the world's oldest intact, playable, multi-note musical
instrument is a bone flute, carved from the wing bone
of a red-crowned crane

six such flutes were found in 1999 at the early
Neolithic excavation site of Jiahu, located in China's
Henan province

using carbon-14 dating, scientists at the Brookhaven
National Laboratory estimated the flutes' ages to be
in the range of 7,000 to 9,000 years


more detailed information can be found at Nature
Magazine; to see and hear these instruments,
check out the video below