The performance is the first that really struck me, to tell the truth. It
certainly doesn't correspond with the spacing, and I should know, as I made by
now quite a few flutes of really different kinds. Thing is, it is performed on a
"reconstruction". Well, I happen to know that you can make a reconstruction that
is fairly similarish to the original, while having a totally different range,
tuning, sound etc. With this kind of flutes the rule of thumb is, you make the
fingerholes undersized, and then tune (if you do have a tuning system in mind,
that is.)Tuning them involves mostly enlarging. A little bit of enlarging goes a
long way. You can have two nearly identical flutes lying side by side, with no
real difference as far as a casual observer is concerned, and on one the same
fingerhole will play a whole tone or more off from the same on the other.
As to the craftsmanship level, I'm not actually claiming that humans of that age
could not make something on this level. What I'm saying is that it simply seems
unlikely. The Isturitz flute, by the way, came in for a lot of critical flak, fo
the same reasons, really. Some specialists doubt its age. Archaeologists know
very well about the existence of later contamination of a site. Caves are
especially prone to this.
My own misgivings are stemming from some other observations as well. I live in
New Zealand. The Maori people did and do have a few woodwind instruments. All
are rim-blown flute types, apart from a couple of trumpets. Well, there are
hundreds in museums around the world. Non of them exhibit any kind of a formal
musical language that you would recognise. In fact, there is no recognisible
pattern to them at all, apart from the mandatory number of fingerholes (3).They
all have different scales. The same applies to just about any othe Polynesian
culture, as well as Melanesians. That's what I meant by the lack of any formal
music. The High Cultures of Mesoamerica and the Andean civilisations fare no
better, I'm afraid. There are some excellent studies of the musical languages of
the Andean civilisations, and I'm afraid they come to similar conclusions. There
doesn't seem to be any coherent, systematic, formalised musical language in
those parts, either. These studies have been made using hundreds of fixed-pitch
woodwinds made from clay, bone, and to a very small degree wood and reed. (there
are really thousands of them in various collections around South America and
elswhere.)
Now my point is that if these rather more advanced cultures didn't require
anything as precise as a pentatonic scale, how can we expect a bunch of mammoth
hunters to have it?
Let me say again, I'm not denying the remote possibility of it, just think it
extremely unlikely. I (and a lot of others) would really welcome some more proof
of it.