Jiahu Bone Flute: Echoes of Prehistoric Civilization

Today, we are going to talk about a museum to be opened on May 18, which is International Museum Day, and we’re going to shine a spotlight on part of its collection – especially a bone flute from the Neolithic Age that first piped out a tune more than 8,000 years ago.

The new museum will open in Wuyang of central China’s Henan Province, and the theme of this museum is to trace the origin of prehistoric Chinese civilization.

The Jiahu Ruins Museum will display the major archaeological discoveries from Jiahu, the most extensively excavated Neolithic site that dates back from around 7,500 to 9,000 years ago. Since its discovery in 1983, the site has been excavated eight times with its most recent one in 2013, and a ninth excavation will be carried out later this year.

The Neolithic Revolution, starting around 10,000 BCE, is one of the most important periods in human history and marks the beginning of true civilization as our nomadic hunter-gather ancestors began settling down amid the development of agriculture.

Throughout the periodic excavations at Jiahu over the course of three decades, archaeologists have made groundbreaking discoveries, including what is believed to be the world’s earliest alcoholic beverage, relic sites where animal husbandry emerged, carved symbols, turtle shells, carbonized rice, as well as today’s protagonist, the bone flute. 

Zhang Juzhong, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China who oversaw the excavations, told The Context, “Jiahu culture existed concurrently as civilization was flourishing in the Tigris and Euphrates valley, and it served as a miniature of the development of East Asia at the time.” Chen Xingcan, director of the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says Jiahu culture was the first peak of prehistoric Chinese civilization. 

Construction of the Jiahu Ruins Museum was started in 2019. The museum was designed to resemble a prehistoric settlement, featuring cylindrical exhibition halls connected by corridors.

Wu Yanfang, director of the Management Committee of the Jiahu Ruins, pointed out that they employed digital technology to create interactive exhibits to provide visitors with a more immersive experience while exploring the more than 400 cultural relics on display. The collection covers the daily activities of the Jiahu people from growing and finding food to carrying out religious ceremonies.

Jiahu bone flutes, arguably the most treasured artifacts of the Jiahu excavations, are the oldest musical instruments ever found in China. From 1986 to 2013, more than 40 of the bone flutes have been unearthed, and while most are repairable or in fragments, several are completely intact.

These petit piccolos, with a length of only around 20 centimeters, were made from the wing bones of red-crowned cranes. They were cut and smoothed at the ends then polished, and finally a row of from two to eight finger holes would be drilled to help make the different notes.

For a while, they were even identified as the world’s earliest wind instruments, that is before the discoveries of a 35,000-year-old bird bone flute in 2009 and a 40,000-year-old one in 2012, both in southern Germany.

Many of these ancient musical instruments, however, are so damaged that conducting tonal analysis on them is not possible. What is really remarkable about the Jiahu bone flutes is that several of them are in such good condition that they are theoretically still playable, capable of producing seven-tone scale music and even complex modern melodies.

The intended use of the bone flutes has not been recorded, but it is speculated that they functioned in rituals and special ceremonies. Ancient Chinese myths from nearly 6,000 years after the flutes were made tell how flute playing and cranes are connected – the sound of the flute can allegedly lure cranes toward a waiting hunter. Whether the same association between flutes and cranes existed for the prehistoric Jiahu people is unknown, but the remains are sure to provide clues to the underpinnings of later cultural traditions in China. 

The first two bone flutes to be discovered were found in the casket of a tomb. They were laying at the side of each thigh of the tomb owner, and archaeologists weren’t sure whether they were musical instruments or not, and didn’t know what to call them.

The two “bone tubes” resembled the horizontally played flute but without blow holes and membrane holes. Neither were they the vertically played Xiao, as they did not have a mouthpiece at the top. They ended up being recorded differently by various archaeologists as “perforated bone tubes”, “flute-shaped vessels”, “xiao-shaped vessels”, and “bone flutes”.

In the summer of 1987, after concluding the sixth excavation, Zhang Juzhong, together with his colleagues at the Henan Provincial Archaeology Institute, took a seven-hole “bone tube” and a carved turtle shell to Beijing. They wanted to consult with established experts in archaeology, paleography, and musicology to identify and interpret these recently unearthed relics.

They invited Xiao Xinghua, a researcher with the Chinese National Academy of Arts, to conduct a detailed acoustical study of the “bone tube” and establish its tonal scale. Xiao was astonished when he caught sight of the “bone tube” because its structure was extremely similar to the Kazakh wind instrument sybyzgy and the Tajik eagle bone flute. He named it “bone flute” and suggested it should be considered a true musical instrument.

Xiao then introduced Zhang and his colleagues to Liu Wenjin, director of the China National Traditional Orchestra. Liu arranged a trial performance for the bone flute. The first six flautists all failed to produce any meaningful sound. The seventh flautist Ning Baosheng tilted the flute by 45 degrees and succeeded in producing a complete tonal scale with accurate notes.

Later that year, Xiao invited experts from Beijing and Wuhan to carry out laboratory acoustical measurements for the Jiahu bone flute. These measurements confirmed that melodies could be played in the context of a musical scale and that the flutes were truly the ancestors of modern wind instruments.

In Chinese musicology, the discovery of the Jiahu flute is considered to be second in importance only to the famous chimes unearthed at the tomb of Marquis Yi of the Zeng State during the Warring States Period in central China’s Hubei Province. You may recall, we did a podcast on Zenghouyi Chimes just last week. 

Aside from the bone flute, another world record at Jiahu is the discovery of an 8,500-year-old fermented beverage made from rice, honey, and either grapes or hawthorn. The Jiahu beverage is the earliest evidence of wine making in the world. The previous earliest evidence of wine making comes from artifacts dated to 5,400 BCE in Iran.

In 2009, Patrick McGovern and his colleagues at the US-based Dogfish Head Craft Brewery decided to take the Jiahu ingredients and make a modern-day version of it. It was obviously no easy task for the modern beer makers. They had to figure out the ratios and volumes of weight of honey, rice and hawthorn, as well as how strong an alcohol it might have been. When they finally had it commercially produced, they called it Chateau Jiahu and it sold in the US and Canada. It seems that Chateau Jiahu was a success, winning a gold medal at the Great American Beer Fest in 2009.

The third most important discovery at Jiahu is the carved symbols on artifacts. Archaeologists found 17 groups of carved symbols on turtle shell, stone, bone, and pottery, which might be the world’s earliest written words, predating previous earliest recorded writings from Mesopotamia in today’s Iraq by more than 2,000 years.

The Jiahu symbols bear many similarities with the oracle bone scripts discovered from Yinxu in Anyang of Henan Province. Oracle-bone script is the earliest fully developed Chinese writing system and was used during the Shang Dynasty, which lasted from 1,600 to 1,046 BCE.

Whether or not the Jiahu symbols are true written characters is still in dispute, with some researchers believing they are “meaningful signs that have a correspondence with ancient Chinese writing”, while some contend they are “a puzzle and an anomaly”, as there are indications the Neolithic culture at Jiahu may not have been complex enough to require a writing system. Whichever the case is, the Jiahu symbols are important because they are helpful for understanding the origins of Chinese characters.

Staring in 1987 and for 12 years thereafter, Zhang devoted himself to further researching the existing information and finally completed a two-volume report entitled Wuyang Jiahu. This comprehensive publication from February 1999 set forth important original data and selected photographic documentation of the excavations; moreover, the report established the significance of Jiahu in the field of Neolithic studies in China.

In September 1999, an article on Jiahu and its significance was published in the scientific journal Nature. The collaboration between Zhang Juzhong and Garman Harbottle, a professor of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, immediately attracted academic and public interest worldwide.

Perhaps one brief note on the relationship between Jiahu and Peiligang culture would be helpful in understanding the significance of Jiahu in a larger and more academic context.

In 1977, archaeologists discovered a Neolithic site at the Peiligang village in Xinzheng of Henan Province. Since then, 100 some Neolithic communities centered around Xinzheng have been found and are now collectively named Peiligang culture after the original village site. The site at Jiahu, some 100 kilometers away from Peiligang, is the earliest site associated with Peiligang culture.

Although there are many similarities between the major Peiligang settlements and the Jiahu culture, especially the pottery vessels and stone tools, archaeologists are divided about the relationship between the two.

Many archaeologists consider Jiahu as part of the Peiligang culture, pointing to their many similarities. However, some, including Zhang Juzhong, believe that Jiahu is a separate culture, pointing to the differences.

Zhang wrote in A Companion to Chinese Archaeology that, “The Jiahu site should be considered as a variation of the Peiligang culture… There are not as many cultural similarities, especially considering their economies, burial traditions, and the material traces of spiritual life. In fact, the differences between Peiligang and Jiahu cultural remains are even greater in these respects.” He explained that any common elements of Peiligang and Jiahu could have resulted from the two cultures coexisting adjacent to one another.

The prehistoric ancestors lived in Jiahu generation after generation for 1,500 years, until a flood destroyed their homeland. Their songs may no longer be heard, but the bone flute, together with the carved symbols, turtle shells, and other cultural relics provide a glimpse of their lives at Jiahu. While Chinese civilization has been verified as having existed for 5,000 years, civilization already dawned at Jiahu over 8,000 years ago at an advanced level far beyond our imagination.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Ni Wei, translator Yang Guang, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.