Music of the Past

When someone talks about the history of music, I'm sure we all immediately think "it's classical music" or even "that long and really boring stuff from a long time ago" or something else along those lines. But does anyone know the actual history of music? I'm not talking about knowing about Beethoven or for those who may play piano, Mozart or Bach. I'm talking about the real beginning of music. Has anyone even thought about how the 5-line score came to be? Or why music notes look like little black dots or circles on lines or between lines? Why does music only have 5-lines and not 4-lines of 6-lines? Why make the notes round and not square?

The beginning of music was NOT classical music. Music actually considered "classical" is only the music from between 1750 and 1830 that is written in that style. 
As you can see, the music that is actually "classical" is not very broad. The beginning of music that is known to us, is the medieval sacred music. During the reign of Pope Gregory the Great, priests began to sing the prayers of mass. These chant melodies were named Gregorian chants as they were created during his papacy. 

Gregorian chants became the liturgical chants of the Roman Catholic Church were not written down at first. There was no notation system at the time. Neumes were the created because it was too difficult for the priests to remember what to sing at what time while the melodies were so fancy. Neumes was the earliest medieval musical notation system with little ascending and descending square signs written on a four-line staff above the words. The square signs only suggested the general shape (rise or fall) of the melody.