Ever since the Germanic-Nordic group met at a Viking re-enactment society, they have aimed to ‘amplify history’ – powered by lavish costumes and knowing theatricality
About 300,000 years ago (give or take a few millennia), the human larynx dropped downwards, an evolutionary advance as vital in separating us from the apes as the development of opposable thumbs and a large cerebral cortex. It meant that our throats got larger, which enabled us to extend the sounds we could make beyond animalistic hooting and howling. Suddenly, we could talk. We could develop a vocabulary. We could sing.
This development marked the birth of music, yet we really know only about relatively recent developments in that enormous history. The world’s oldest known musical instrument – a Neanderthal flute carved from the bone of a bear, found in 1995 in a Slovenian cave – is just 50,000 years old. The oldest piece of written music is far younger: a spry 4,000 years old. What remains of it is little more than notes on how to tune a lyre – certainly not enough for anyone to pull a melody from it.
