The oldest playable instruments are red-crowned crane-bone flutes from China’s Neolithic Age and in Tibet thigh-bone trumpets (rkangling) and skull drums (damaru) were used.

Skull lyres, thought to be from Ethiopia, are rare, scarcely documented and found only in museums. While some have suggested a symbolic or clandestine ritual use for these lyres, there is no known tradition. Most likely it is a sensational item made for the nineteenth-century European market.