Ever wondered what the majority of musical instruments are made of?

Most commonly, our favorite and most tuneful instruments are made of wood – including the very specific trees from which the wood for violins, cellos, and clarinets are made from.

Other common materials include metal – commonly brass, carbon fibre, or even bronze, silver, and gold – or reeds, and even animal hides.

Though musical instruments date back through history, our ways of making some of them are surprisingly modern.

And this is for the best, since according to a new study from Dr Matthew Taylor of Augusta University, some of the ancient methods of instrument crafting were significantly more grisly.

In a research project analyzing artifacts found in prehistoric sites in southern Texas, Taylor discovered that one of the musical instruments used in this culture, formed of an unknown tribe, was actually made from human bone.

This isn’t an isolated incident either, with human bone instruments scattered through museums across the world.

Known as an omichicahuaztli, this particular instrument was whittled from a human humerus, which history suggests could have been acquired as a kind of war trophy or a token or ancestor worship. Or bone could merely have been an abundant material, since – as Taylor explains in the story – society at this point was very different to what we know today:

“Late Prehistoric South Texas (1300–1528 AD) was characterized by hunter-gatherer habitation. Forager peoples lived in the region from Paleoindian times up to and beyond European contact and never adopted agriculture.”

Without agriculture or other types of what we might now consider civilization, it is quite possible that the use of human bones for such means may not be considered disrespectful or macabre, in the way that it would be now.

And that’s because not only were the kind of Mexican rasp instruments, that sat in the collection alongside the omichicahuaztli, commonly made from human bone (usually leg bones), they were also engraved and made quite beautiful.

Other artefacts in the collection were also made of human bones, derived from arms, legs, or ribs. And these may have been precious objects.

In fact, Dr Taylor suggests in the study – which was recently published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaology – that the use of human bones to make music could have been a kind of religious practice or a token of respect or worship, rather than something taboo:

“Although some may wish to equate the presence of these artifacts with the existence of cannibalism, this report does not support or refute that hypothesis.”

This factor, however, is unlikely to make many of us comfortable with the idea of our arm becoming a wind instrument.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about 50 amazing finds on Google Earth.