Early in the 17th century Mersenne in his Harmonie Universelle described two types of shawms--
the Hautbois de Poitou which corresponds to the shawm described above, and the treble hautbois
which appears to be a precursor to the modern oboe. This instrument used no pirouette, and had
eight finger holes in addition to what appear to be two tuning holes. Not long after this (c. 1660-
1670) the oboe emerged as the jointed, more cylindrical, keyed instrument which formed the
nucleus of the woodwind section for the second half of the seventeenth century