An unusual antler from Vietnam may be one of the oldest known stringed instruments ever unearthed. Discovered in an area on the banks of the Mekong River, the 2,000-year-old instrument appears to be a single-stringed harp and seems to be the ancestor of the complex musical instruments that people still play in Vietnam.
The artifact consists of a 35-centimeter piece of antlers with a hole at one end for a nail, possibly used to tune the string, like the keys on the top of a guitar. Although the rope was long gone, the object also has a bridge that may have been used to support the rope.
Archaeologists from the Australian National University and the Long An Museum in Vietnam recently described this impressive object in a new paper and concluded that it was almost certainly a stringed instrument played to make music.
The antler seems likely to have come from a Sambar deer or an Indian pig deer, two species endemic to the Southeast Asian mainland. The team says the historical artifact is 2000 years old and comes from the culture of Vietnam along the Mekong River.
While there is evidence that many ancient cultures had a rich and beautiful musical culture, they often do not appear in the archaeological record due to the paucity of finds (it would be truly exceptional to find songs hidden in rock deposits).
For example, ancient Greece is one of the most studied chapters in ancient history, and we know that the enjoyment of music played an important role in their culture, as seen in many works of art that show the playing of instruments. However, the quest to discover what music is like has been described as a “frantic enigma.”
To better understand the musical cultures of ancient Vietnam, the researchers examined a catalog of more than 600 bone artifacts found in the region. Their analysis states that this horn fits the bill and marks the emergence of contemporary Vietnamese musical instruments like the K’ný.
The new study was published this week in the journal Antiquity.
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