Welcome to You Ask Andy

Carol Smith, age 10, of Atlanta Ga., for her question:

Who invented the first musical instrument?

No one knows who this first musician was. For men learned to make music before they learned to write and keep records of famous doings.. The very first musical instrument may well have been a drum; Maybe same wide‑awake children of the cave men stretched an animal skin over a hollow log. They may have beat tom‑toms to call their friends, for dancing feet, or just for fun.

Other cave people discovered they could make bugle calls, The instruments they used were conch shells and deer horns. Much, much later they discovered how to make stringed instruments. This had to wait for the invention of the bow and arrow. For it is thought that the vibrating music of a stringed instrument may have been suggested by the twang of a bow string,

Bells and gongs were invented still later, They had to wait for the invention of metal work, But even bells and gongs were invented long before the dawn of recorded history, People, it seems, have loved music since time began, And we don't know who to thank for starting it all.

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