What's the oldest technology? Farming came late in history. Before farming, settled herdsmen and gatherers made clothing, knives, tents, spears -- but so did nomads before them. Go back further: archaeology tells us that pictures and music were among stone-age technologies. Some really magnificent cave paintings survive, along with evidence of rattles, drums, pipes, and shell trumpets. Even the Bible -- the chronology of the Hebrew tribes -- identifies musical-instrument-making as one of three technologies that arose in the 7th and 8th generations after Adam.

Music is clearly as old as any technology we can date. Couple that with the sure knowledge that whales sing -- that the animal urge to make music precedes technology, and I offer music-making as my candidate for the oldest technology of all.