The first few weeks of 2018 will focus on China’s long history starting with the earliest known musical instrument found in China.
Music in China is traditionally associated with ritual observances and government affairs.
In 1999, Chinese archeologists unearthed what is believed to be the oldest known playable instrument, a seven-holed flute fashioned about 9,000 years ago from the hollow wing bone of a large bird.
To establish the age of the flute, a U.S. chemist at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory analyzed data from carbon-14 dating done in China on materials taken from the site. “The flutes may be the earliest complete, playable, tightly-dated, multinote musical instruments.”
The 9,000-year-old flutes were “exquisitely-crafted” from the wing bone of a red-crowned crane.
In The Book of Songs, an ancient collection of Chinese poetry from the 11th to the 7th century BC, the three-hole Yue is the most frequently mentioned wind instrument, but by the Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD), the Yue had all but vanished.
Discover China’s First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi,
the man that unified China more than 2,000 years ago.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.
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