Short answers, pulled from the story.
The flute is a woodwind instrument in the aerophone group that produces sound with a vibrating column of air. Sound begins when the player's air flows across an opening, exciting the air inside the instrument's resonant cavity. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, flutes are edge-blown aerophones.
Flutes from the Geißenklösterle cave near Ulm, Germany, dated to 42,000 to 43,000 years old, are the oldest confirmed musical instruments after a redating. A disputed cave bear femur from Divje Babe in Slovenia, dated to about 43,000 years ago, may be older. Flutes found in the Swabian Jura region of Germany date to roughly 53,000 to 45,000 years ago.
Theobald Boehm evolved the size and placement of tone holes, the key mechanism, and the fingering system of the Western concert flute between 1832 and 1847. His work greatly improved the instrument's dynamic range and intonation, and most modern concert flutes still follow his Boehm system design.
India uses two main flutes, both made of bamboo and keyless. The Bansuri has six finger holes and one embouchure hole and is used in the Hindustani music of Northern India, while the Venu or Pullanguzhal has eight finger holes and is used in the Carnatic music of Southern India.
A study in which professional flutists were blindfolded found no significant differences between flutes made from various metals. In two blind listenings no flute was correctly identified at first, and in a second only the silver flute was identified. The study concluded there was no evidence that wall material has any appreciable effect on sound color or dynamic range.
Both terms refer to a musician who plays the flute. Flutist dates back to at least 1603 in the Oxford English Dictionary, while flautist was used in 1860 by Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Marble Faun, after being adopted from Italy during the 18th century.
A playable Chinese Gudi bone flute excavated from a tomb in Jiahu is about 9,000 years old, made from the wing bones of red-crowned cranes with five to eight holes. The earliest surviving Chinese transverse flute is a chi from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, dating from 433 BC.