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| April 1, 2012 | 2,300-yr old world’s earliest stringed instrument found in cave | |
London: The remains of what is believed to be the earliest stringed
instrument in western Europe have been uncovered in Scotland. A small burnt and broken piece of carved wood was found during an excavation in a cave on Skye.
According to archaeologists, it is part of the bridge of a lyre, a stringed instrument
used in Greek classical era. It is believed to be 2,300 years old. Music archaeologist
Graeme Lawson told the BBC the discovery pushed the history of complex music back
more than a thousand years. The remains, which were unveiled in Edinburgh , were
found in High Pasture Cave , where Bronze and Iron Age finds have been made previously.
Cultural historian Purser said the find was exciting because it confirmed the
continuity of a love of music amongst the Western Celts. The small wooden fragment
thought to be from a 2,300-year-old lyre was found at an excavation site in High
Pasture Cave on the Isle of Skye He said stringed instruments, which were usually
made of wood, rarely survived in the archaeological record, but they were referred
to in the very earliest literature. Steven Birch, an archaeologist involved in
the excavation, said deeper sections of the cave were reached using a flight of
stone steps. “Descending the steep and narrow steps, the transition from light
to dark transports you out of one world into a completely different realm, where
the human senses are accentuated,” the Daily Mail quoted Birch as saying. “Within
the cave, sound forms a major component of this transformation, the noise of the
underground stream in particular producing a calming environment,” he said. AOC
Archaeology in Edinburgh worked on conserving the bridge. It was among several
artefacts recovered from the cave in a project supported Highland Council, Historic
Scotland and National Museums of Scotland.
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