Early Beginnings

Early Beginnings

Music very likely had its beginnings in the crude ritualistic acts of primitive times. In fact, the oldest proof of the musician class is a wall painting found in a cave in the Pyrenees area of southwest France. It shows a man dancing with an animals's mask and robe playing a musical bow. He is attempting to lure reindeer to the hunt. Jacques Chailley, an eminent musicologist cited in 1964 that the wall painting dated 40,000 years! Music was the centre of the rites that pre-date the development of organized religion by thousands of years. [AW] {MI}