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‘Europe’s oldest stringed instrument’ discovered on Scots island

Instrument: Ancient instrument discovered on Scottish island. Pic: © Historic Scotland The history of music in Britain may be 1000 years older than originally thought. Archaeologists have found what could be the remains of Europe's oldest stringed instrument. A small wooden fragment thought to be from a 2300-year-old lyre was found at an excavation site in High Pasture Cave on the isle of Skye. Music archaeologists Dr Graeme Lawson and Dr John Purser studied the piece and said the notches where strings would have been placed are easy to distinguish on the artefact, despite it being been burnt and broken. Dr Lawson, of Cambridge Music-archaeological Research, said: "For Scotland, and indeed all of us in these islands, this is very much a step-change. "It pushes the history of complex music back more than a thousand years into our darkest pre-history. And not only the ...