Where did the bagpipes begin?

Question:

Where did the bagpipes begin?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: There is no document availabe that says the bagpipes were invented on <date>, but it is possible to look at the evolution of instruments and make an educated guess. Early pictures and writings talk about wooden whistles and pipe chanters (pipes of Pan, for instance). A small step to adding an air resevoir like an animal's bladder to get continous sound out of it. By making the resevoir larger using animal skins, larger chanters could be used. I believe it was the Italian pipe that used the second chanter and then later added a drone. Just about all cultures add a form of bagpipe, but they dropped by the wayside with the Great Highland Bagpipe surviving in numbers. The GHB as seen today is only around 200 yrs old. Previously it only had a bass and a tenor drone. The second tenor was added with documentation that many Scots found it too noisy and the drone sound just too overpowering. Considering the quality of reeds and instruments, one wonders how today's pipes would measure up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bagpipes... No one knows for sure. Don't believe those stories about it being mentioned in the bible or being seen in sumarian art or played by aristotle - all those are inconclusive, and webmasters (including those from wikipedia) simply repost other people's pet theories (which have no basis in fact).

The earliest famous record we have is of Emperor Nero of rome. That passage is pretty unambiguous.

It was most likely invented independently by different cultures, and was developed into it's most advanced form by the scots (I say advanced because they have standardized the manufacturing process, unlike their counterparts in spain, france, bulgaria, germany, etc - not because scottish ones are somehow 'better'. All bagpipes are cool). There are also swedish ones, eastern european ones, middle eastern/north african ones, italian ones. Most of the raw materials (reed, wood, goatskin) were available to many cultures, not just one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bag_pipes#a...