Anything can be an instrument once purpose turns noise into music
A musical instrument is a device made or adapted to produce musical sound; intention, not physics alone, draws the line. The oldest candidates are simple flutes some fifty to sixty thousand years old, though many scholars prefer dates near forty thousand years.
Early uses likely signaled hunts or marked ritual before melody-as-entertainment matured. Instruments arose independently, then spread through contact—Mesopotamian types reached maritime Southeast Asia by the post-classical era. After about 1400, Western innovation dominated for a time; Classical and Romantic centuries (roughly 1750–1900) added many new designs. Pinning down a first instrument may be impossible, since most early ones were made of skin, bone, wood and other materials that rot. Some researchers add lithophones, ringing stones like those at Sankarjang in India, to the prehistoric list. One contested find, the Divje Babe flute, is put at some 67,000 years old, but firmer agreement settles on finds around 37,000 years old.
Hornbostel–Sachs, the leading academic taxonomy, sorts by how vibration starts rather than by material or range. Moving from body percussion to objects marks the conceptual birth of instruments, probably first to mimic nature in ceremony.
Europeans played instruments born in North Africa, and the Americas developed their own more slowly while sharing designs from north to south. In the twentieth century traditional designs changed less, but electricity brought electric guitars, synthesizers and the theremin. Instruments can also be grouped by range, material, size or role, and their study is called organology. Early makers used found objects such as shells and plant parts, and almost every natural material has been turned into an instrument somewhere. A person who plays one is an instrumentalist, whether plucking strings, striking a drumhead or blowing into a horn.
Source: Musical instrument
