ROME — When archaeologist Giovanni Carboni first came upon the oddly shaped ceramic object during an excavation in a Roman suburb in 2006, he was baffled. “I said — please don’t write this, though, ...

Humans played the very first instruments thousands of years ago — 42,000 or 43,000 years ago, to be as exact as possible. The oldest known instruments are flutes carved from bird bone and mammoth ...

A new study describes a previously unknown prehistoric tribe of hunter-gatherers from the southern coast of Texas, who crafted musical instruments from modified human bones. The findings of the ...

An exhibition at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix features some of China's earliest known musical instruments, the oldest dating from 7,000 to 9,000 years ago. Experts analyzing instruments in ...

When a hootenanny struck up 3,000—or 30,000—years ago, no recording engineer was there to capture what went down. Can anyone know, then, what ancient instruments like the aulos and carnyx really ...

A handful of unnaturally elongated stones sat on display at the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve museum for decades with no one ever knowing exactly what they were. Many were too big and ...

Chinese archaeologists working in Hubei province’s Zaoyang City have unearthed an ancient stringed instrument dating back thousands of years. It’s said to be the earliest ever found in China. Above: a ...

When researchers in China discovered a series of tombs and horse burials, they saw that the archaeological site had been pillaged. One tomb, a large construction in the shape of the letter “A,” likely ...

ANN ARBOR, MI - Michigan’s state motto translates to, “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.” Replace peninsula with museums, and that pretty well describes the University of Michigan in ...

Casually, like well-bred amateurs, the ten musicians adjusted lights and music racks, then began to play Handel’s Concerto Grosso in G Major. There was nothing casual, nothing amateurish about their ...

ANN ARBOR, MI - What do you want to learn next fall? Sure, you can just take the prerequisites for that quantitative economics or neurobiology degree. Graduating on time: that’s a good thing, but what ...