reading about the history of the Divje Babe neanderthal flute (or "tidldibab" if you prefer), the first musical instrument in the archeological record which is unambiguously attributable to neanderthals, and the earliest clear musical instrument in the archeological record, period.
it's very funny that there was just a few researchers who just obstinately denied all the evidence that it was a deliberately crafted musical instrument and even now wikipedia lends their basically unsubstantiated opinions equal merit to the people who were busy doing experimental archeology demonstrating how unlikely it is to have been just random chance
but more exciting was the realization that, wait a minute, if they managed to make a playable reconstruction of it, there's a strong possibility someone has uploaded a version of it to thingiverse, and sure enough, there is one!! and i know someone with a 3d printer!!
im pretty dour about technology a lot of the time but i just think that it is kind of incredible and more than a little exhilarating that 60,000 years ago a non-human person of a sister1 hominin species to my body, a frickin neanderthal, made a flute, it got left in a cave for tens of thousands of years until humans found it and managed to fix it up (despite the refusal to acknowledge it as a musical instrument by Academic Weirdos), figured out how to play it,
and now, through the power of the internet and 3d printing, i, living a world away, can just like, print a replica of the world's oldest musical instrument??? i could try and probably fail to play a neanderthal flute?? that's AMAZING. what a strange and wonderful connection between me and a person in europe 60,000 years ago, before even humans arrived there!! wow!!!
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technically neanderthals are not the sister group to humans- humans are phylogenetically more basal or "primitive"2 than neanderthals, whose sister species is the denisovans.
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a word i would not normally use, i tend to favour "basal", except in this one case i think it's really funny that the taxonomic concept of "primitive"ness which humans invented to make themselves feel good and advanced and like "gods special children" actually categorizes humans as primitive relative to the "cavemen" they have been so dismissive and judgmental of