GUITARS

Knowing and appreciating the history of the guitar may not be essential to being a great guitarist. It is amazing how we can all be so familiar with something and not know its history or its origin. Anyone who thinks the guitar is an American or modern invention, is wrong. Anyone who thinks that the guitar is a hundred, two hundred or even a thousand years old is also mistaken. Actually, most musical historians believe that the guitar was born at least 4000 years ago, although no one really knows for sure.

The oldest evidence of the existence of the guitar dates back to 1900-1800 B.C. It was found in Babylonia on clay plaques, which depict nude figures playing instruments that bear a general resemblance to the guitar. Of course, this is far too early for us to expect it to look exactly like the guitars of today, but it did have strings and a distinctly differentiated body and neck.

Around the same time in Egypt, the only plucked instrument was a bow-shaped harp. Meanwhile, in Rome, the instrument had been growing and developing more and more into the basic guitar shape. The first known European stringed instrument dates back to the third century.