 This video is brought to you by CuriosityStream. If you sign up to CuriosityStream with the link in the description, you'll also get free access to Nebula where you can watch all sorts of exclusive content from some of the best creators on the web. For as long as humans have existed, we've made music. Archaeologists have uncovered bone flutes that they believe to be somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 years old, and even before that, proto-humans were likely making music with their voice. Fast forward a few thousand decades, and basically every culture that's ever existed has had some sort of a musical tradition. But unlike other artistic mediums, we don't actually really know what most of these looked like. Recording technology is little more than a century old, and our understanding of a lot of historic notation systems are based on educated guesses. That's not even to mention the countless musical traditions that didn't use notation. The upshot of all of this is that a significant amount of all the music ever made has been completely lost to time. I've been thinking on this reality a lot lately, and it's led me to a question that really hasn't left my head. What is the oldest song that is still regularly heard today in a form that might be recognizable to someone listening to it when it was made? Or in simpler terms, what is the oldest song that you know? Now the answer to this question obviously depends on who you are. If like me you've had the question of oldest music before, there's a good chance you've come across something talking about the Hurrian hymns. These Bronze Age hymns were carved in clay tablets that have been dated as far back as 1400 BCE. They were written in an ancient form of writing called cuneiform and meant to be played on an early form of a liar. What you're hearing right now is a modern interpretation of one of these hymns as performed by Brayden Olson on YouTube. As incredible as this piece is, it's not exactly one that's made its way into a lot of modern listening. And on top of that, there's no real way of knowing how accurate the modern interpretations of the song are. Of course that's a problem that kind of plagues this entire endeavor. While we can have educated guesses at ancient pieces like this, we're often missing aspects like tempo, dynamics, and sometimes even key. And then of course there's the problem of straight up missing parts of the song, as is the case for the Delphic hymns, a set of Greek compositions dated back to 138 and 128 BC. As you're probably noticing, hymns make up a lot of the earliest music that we're aware of. Religion and music have always been intrinsically tied. The Hindu Vedas, which are some of the oldest pieces of literature in existence, formed the basis for Indian classical music. And the five classics of Confucianism laid the basis for Chinese classical music. So if you're familiar with some of these musical traditions, you've likely heard and picked up on musical ideas that are centuries old. And if you're Jewish, you might recognize a hymn written sometime between the years of 1500 C. But as you'll notice, that's a pretty broad range of dates. A lot of these religious hymns have gone through a number of modifications and variations, so it's difficult to pin down exactly where they came from. To find some songs that we can draw a more direct lineage from, we need to look at the Middle Ages. If you watch movies at all, there's a very good chance that you might recognize a phrase from a 13th century song called D.S.E. Ray. D.S.E. Ray or Day of Wrath is a Gregorian chant about the apocalypse. That opening run of notes has become one of the most cited pieces of music in all of pop culture. It's particularly common in film scores. References to this chant have appeared in movies like It's a Wonderful Life, Home Alone, The Lion King, and Even the Lord of the Rings. But it's unclear who wrote this and when. There's some that will say it's been around as early as the 600s, but more likely it was written sometime in the mid-13th century by one of Thomas of Solano or Latino Malabrasco or Sini. If you want the oldest piece of music you know, this might just be it. Except chances are you probably don't really know the whole song. You probably just know the opening notes. To find a song that you might know more than a handful of notes from, we need to look away from religious songs and towards secular folk music. There was an early English folk song from around the same time as D.S.E. Ray called Sumer is a Kuminin. As per usual, we don't really know when it was first written, but we do have a manuscript showing the song's lyrics and melody that was compiled sometime in the early 1260s. Rather than being a hymn to a god, this song is singing about the simple realities of medieval life, the changing of the seasons. Like the D.S.E. Ray, this piece survives today partially through popular culture. 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood used the song, and then in 1973 a version of it was used as the climax for the horror movie The Wicker Man. So for some of you, this may be the oldest song you recognize, but honestly I don't think that there's that many people prancing around singing Sumer is a Kuminin these days. For the song that I think has most clearly permeated modern western culture, we still need to jump ahead a few centuries. As is so often the case, musical history is intrinsically tied to technology, and in the case of our quest today, the piece of technology that most helped the preservation of musics was the printing press. In the 1500s, printing presses completely changed the way that music, and especially folk music, was distributed. Prior to the printing press, folk songs spread through wandering minstrels, but once printing technology became available, we started to see the widespread distribution of music for the first time. The lyrics to folk songs would be printed on single pieces of broadside paper and sold at markets and fairs. These so-called broadsides generally only indicated a title and lyrics, but below the title they tell you a commonly known tune that you could sing the lyrics to, and broadsides became an absolute phenomenon. So much so that the stationers company in London created a system of registration for these broadsides, and it's from this registration system that we find what I can very in confidently say is probably the oldest song you know. On September 3rd, 1580, Richard Jones registered a song called A New Northern Diddy of Ye Lady Green Sleeves. It's doubtful that Jones himself wrote the song as a number of similar ballads were registered within the year. One was even recorded the same day by Edward White under the title Ye Lady Green Sleeves' Answer to Duncan Her Friend. Today, there's a good chance you'll recognize the tune as simply Green Sleeves. In its day, Green Sleeves might have been something comparable to a chart-topping pop hit. In fact, it even made its way into the pop culture of the day with a reference in Shakespeare's Mary Wives of Windsor. For me, Green Sleeves was a staple of piano lessons as a kid, and my wife has told me that she most recognizes the melody as the Christmas Carol, what child is this. Now, once again, there's no way of actually knowing if this melody is exactly what was being played or sung in the 1500s, but there's a lot clearer of a lineage here than older songs. So is this a definitive answer to the question I posed in the beginning? Not even close. But I hope that, at the very least, you enjoyed the exploration. Are there any songs that I missed? Do you know an older song that you want to share that you think has permeated pop culture today? If so, let me know in the comments. This question has really captured my attention the last few weeks, so I would love more potential answers. If weird music histories are thing, have I got a documentary for you. Rad Elvis, the Cold War cowboy, tells the incredible story of an American musician who defected to the Soviet Union in the Cold War and became a Soviet pop star. It's honestly the exact sort of musical ephemera that I live for. And if you want to check it out, you can do so by following the link in the description. That link will get you 26% off an annual subscription to CuriosityStream, the best place online for documentary content. And of course, following that link also gets you access to Nebula, the streaming service created by and for creators. That means you'll be able to watch thousands of documentaries and you'll be able to watch all of my videos early and ad free. 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