40,000 year old flute from the site of Geißenklösterle made from bird bones. The University of Tübingen

Scientists researching a human settlement in southern Germany have discovered some bone flutes they think are some 40,000 years old. LiveScience writer Jennifer Welsh writes on Discovery:

Early modern humans could have spent their evenings sitting around the fire, playing bone flutes and singing songs 40,000 years ago, newly discovered ancient musical instruments indicate. The bone flutes push back the date researchers think human creativity evolved.

• The flutes are the earliest record of technological and artistic innovations characteristic of the Aurignacian period.
• The Danube River was a key corridor for the movement of humans and technological innovations into central Europe.
• Neanderthals as well as modern humans may have lived in this area around the same time.

“These results are consistent with a hypothesis we made several years ago that the Danube River was a key corridor for the movement of humans and technological innovations into central Europe between 40,000 and 45,000 years ago,” study researcher Nick Conard, of Tübingen University, said in a statement. “Geißenklösterle is one of several caves in the region that has produced important examples of personal ornaments, figurative art, mythical imagery and musical instruments. The new dates prove the great antiquity of the Aurignacian in Swabia.”

The Sun Came Out. Highly recommended by Smart Energy.

The Sun Came Out: 7 Worlds Collide Again

How do 20 musicians who’ve never worked together before record an album of original material in three weeks? First, you get Neil Finn to invite you to the wild west coast of New Zealand. Make it for right around Christmas time, the heart of southern hemisphere summer, and have Finn invite not just you, but your whole family.

Ask everyone to bring a song. “We need songs,” Finn would’ve pointed out. “We’re recording an album.”

But no one does, of course, because artists are more human than humans, and thus are more easily distracted, are lazier, are more prone to procrastination. But it doesn’t matter because there is a deadline. Record the album, then play the shows.

Don’t want to let your mates down, so write something good and then learn to play it.

Because we’re not doing this for fun, nor for a nice subtropical vacation, but for Oxfam. So we want it to be good, so people will buy the album and come to the shows so we can make some money and give it all away.

Neil Finn wails at a 7 Worlds Collide show.

This exact scenario didn’t happen just once, but twice. The first 7 Worlds Collide collaboration was in 2001. Seven years later, 7 Worlds Collide Again brought together Finn and his various offspring with Jonny Marr (The Smiths’ guitarist), Lisa Germano Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien and drummer Phil Selway, Sebastian Steinberg of Soul Coughing, and all of Wilco. Throw in a handful of New Zealand’s top singer/songwriters and you do indeed have a chance of making a sizable donation to Oxfam.

The decision to “record” the studio process — meaning “shoot,” as director Simon Mark-Brown points out — wasn’t made until a few days before the musicians started arriving from the frozen north. We’re fortunate to have this document of the creative process and of people getting along, egos aside, to make good music.

4 stars out of a possible 5.

Actors: Neil Finn, Eddie Vedder, Lisa Germano, Phil Selway, Johnny Marr
Director: Simon Mark-Brown
Studio: Cinema Libre Studio
DVD release: 10 April 2012
Runtime: 84 minutes (1 disc)
Format: Color, NTSC, Widescreen
DVD Features: Concert documentary

I love what Larry Braggs, the lead singer, had to say last night about the group’s 45th anniversary DVD: “We know you college kids are broke and are gonna copy it. We’re kinda OK with that. It’s your parents we get mad it for copying.”