Stone Age Art Caves May Have Been Concert Halls
- From: Jack Linthicum <jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 08:24:55 -0700 (PDT)
A new meaning to the phrase "rock concert". Pictures at cite.
Stone Age Art Caves May Have Been Concert Halls
Ker Than
for National Geographic News
July 2, 2008
Prehistoric peoples chose places of natural resonant sound to draw
their famed cave sketches, according to new analyses of paleolithic
caves in France.
In at least ten locations, drawings of horses, bison, and mammoths
seem to match locations that focus, amplify, and transform the sounds
of human voices and musical instruments.
Ancient cave painting art in France picture
"In the cave of Niaux in Ariège, most of the remarkable paintings are
situated in the resonant Salon Noir, which sounds like a Romanesque
chapel," said Iegor Reznikoff, an acoustics expert at the University
of Paris who conducted the research.
The sites would therefore have served as places of natural power,
supporting the theory that decorated caves were backdrops for
religious and magical rituals.
An intriguing possibility—but one that Reznikoff admits is hard to test
—is that the acoustic properties of a cave partly influenced what
animals were painted on its walls.
For example, "maybe horses are related to spaces that sound a certain
way," he said.
Reznikoff will present his latest findings this week at the annual
meeting of the Acoustics Society of America in Paris.
Strategic Placement
Reznikoff first noticed the strategic placement of cave art while
visiting Le Portel, a paleolithic cave in France, in 1983.
An expert in the acoustics of 11th- and 12th-century European
churches, Reznikoff often hums to himself when entering a room for the
first time so he can "feel its sounds."
He was surprised to discover that in some of the rooms in Le Portel
decorated with painted animals, his humming became noticeably louder
and clearer.
"Immediately the idea came," he told National Geographic News. "Would
there be a relationship between the location of the painting and the
quality of the resonance in these locations?"
Since that moment, Reznikoff has found correlations between painting
locations and the resonance of their surroundings in more than ten
paleolithic caves across France with illustrations ranging from 25,000
to 15,000 years old.
Many are packed together in parts of the caves where the human voice
is amplified and where songs and chants would have lingered in the air
as abiding echoes.
Paul Pettitt, a paleolithic rock art expert at the University of
Sheffield in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, said
Reznikoff's theory could explain the puzzling distribution of
paintings at many cave sites.
"In a number of decorated caves the images cluster in certain areas,"
Pettitt said. "They are not randomly distributed but seem deliberately
placed, with areas of perfectly 'paintable' walls ignored, and in a
number of cases the paintings cluster in areas of resonance."
Artistic Connection
Ian Cross, director of the Centre for Music and Science at the
University of Cambridge, was not involved in the study.
Cross said Reznikoff's theory is "interesting" and warrants further
investigation.
"What he's done strongly suggests that there are grounds for following
this up with some properly controlled studies" involving detailed
acoustical measurements, Cross said.
Pettitt, the University of Sheffield archaeologist, said Reznikoff's
research is consistent with other work that suggests music and dance
played an integral role in the lives of ancient people.
Instruments such as bone flutes and "roarers"—bone and ivory
instruments that whir rhythmically when spun—have been found in
decorated caves.
In rare instances, cave images include highly stylized females who
appear to be dancing or enigmatic, part-animal "sorcerer" figures
engaging in what seem to be transformational dances.
"This is therefore an artistic connection between dance and art.
Perhaps in this case the art is recording specific ritual events,"
Pettitt said. "It is inconceivable that such rituals would have taken
place in silence."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080702-cave-paintings.html
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