True archaeological pan-pipes appear relatively late compared with flutes. It could be because bone, reed & bamboo decay easily

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Bone pan-pipes are multiple tubes bound together
When blown across the top. A group of tubes at different lengths; produces different pitch’s.

Neolithic pan-pipes were made from materials such as bone, reed, or bamboo
Each pipe produces one pitch; and the set produces a scale.

In prehistory many finds are single bone pipes or flutes, not full pan-pipe bundles
Archaeologists sometimes can interpret sets of pipes as early panpipes.

They deteriorate easily

The earliest strong archaeological examples are from 3 to 2.5 thousand BCE in the Cycladic islands of Greece
Small marble figurines depicting musicians playing panpipes are found. These figurines are among the earliest reliable depictions of the instrument.

Their are depictions as well
Indicating the instrument existed by the early bronze age.

By 1.1 thousand BCE, Henan province, China. Bone panpipes are found in Zhou dynasty tombs
True prehistoric panpipes (bundled pipes) are rare archaeologically.

The scarcity likely comes from preservation problems because pipes often made of reed or wood and organic materials decay
Finds, and depictions, are more common from the bronze age onwards.

Often used for ritual and religion. Because music accompanies ceremonies, ancestor rituals, hunting rites, and social events
They were used for dancing, feasts, storytelling, and communication or signaling.

Short pan-pipes, flutes, or bone whistles could have also be used for hunting signals & herding

Unfortunately preservation bias is huge. Though bone survives better, wood rots, and they both deteriorate, over hundreds let alone thousands of years
So the archaeological record is only a small fraction of what existed.

True archaeological pan-pipes appear relatively late compared with flutes. Check it out.

Bibliography: Lund, C. S. (1985). Bone Flutes in Västergötland, Sweden. Finds and Traditions. A Music-Archaeological Study. Acta Musicologica, 57(1), 9–25. https://doi.org/10.2307/932685

Bibikov, S. (1981). Studies of the Mezin mammoth-bone musical ensemble.

Morley, Iain, The Prehistory of Music: Human Evolution, Archaeology, and the Origins of Musicality (Oxford, 2013; online edn, Oxford Academic, 16 Mar. 2015), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199234080.001.0001

Aguirre-Fernández G, Blasi DE, Sánchez-Villagra MR. Panpipes as units of cultural analysis and dispersal. Evol Hum Sci. 2020 May 21;2:e17. doi: 10.1017/ehs.2020.15. PMID: 37588347; PMCID: PMC10427469

archaeology magazine. (n.d.). Neolithic Site Discovered in Western Anatolia. archaeology.org. https://archaeology.org/news/2021/07/06/210707-turkey-neolithic-music/

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