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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Silk Road tech transfer: this ancient lyre went global

A stringed instrument more than 1,000 years old found in what is now Kazakhstan is nearly identical to one from the Sutton Hoo ‘ship burial’ in Britain.
Drawing of the lyre from Dzhetyasar

The 1,600-year-old lyre (artist’s impression) excavated in Dzhetyasar, Kazakhstan, has the same design as those found in cemeteries thousands of kilometres away in Western Europe. Credit: Gjermund Kolltveit

A 1,600-year-old lyre found in modern Kazakhstan matches musical instruments seen in Anglo-Saxon burials of the first millennium ad, suggesting that technology transfer occurred across thousands of kilometres in antiquity1.

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Nature 600, 572 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03685-y

References

  1. Kolltveit, G. Antiquity https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.164 (2021).

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