The Sound of Skin and Sinew
How did the domestication of animals change how we made music? Dr Brenna Hassett unearths the origins of our earliest musical instruments, ending with the Agricultural Revolution.
How did the domestication of animals change our music-making?
Archaeologist Dr Brenna Hassett takes us on a several-million-year-long journey to ask how we came to be the species that makes music. It is the story of noise. Purposeful, beautiful noise. And the unbelievable talent we have for adapting the material world we live in to make musical instruments.
This final episode brings us into a much more recent world. One where we are not only masters of our own human voices, and makers of instruments from wood, reed, bone, stone and clay, but the point in time (about twelve thousand years ago) when we started to become entwined with the animals we once hunted. This is now known as the Neolithic Revolution, or the First Agricultural Revolution, and with it came many innovations, including new and exciting ways to make melodies from skin and sinew, hide and horn.
Written and read by Dr Brenna Hassett
Produced and directed by Becky Ripley
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- Fri 17 Jul 2026 21:45麻豆社 Radio 3
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