And by "old," I mean sometime in the year 16,000 BC or so. In this Ars Technica piece by Kiona Smith, we can read how archeologists figured out that a broken conch shell found in 1931 was not a drinking cup as they first thought.
The tip of the shell was broken off and scientists through the years thought that was something that had just happened as an accident or as a product of existing for 18,000 years. But biologists pointed out that the tip is a pretty strong part of the shell and would not be prone to breakage unless the force involved might break the rest of the shell too. The conical spiral of conch shells helps produce more than one note when played correctly so they are often used as musical instruments by hunter-gatherer people.
The presence of some kind of residue around the broken end suggested that the shell was played with a mouthpiece, since the cut edge could injure a musician's lips. The story contains a sound file of the three notes that were played when a trumpet-like mouthpiece was inserted in the opening. Other clues suggest that the shell may have been decorated with paint or other attachments.
Since it was found in a cave near Toulouse, France, about 50 miles from a coastline, archaeologists think that it may help them understand trading relationships between people who lived in that part of Europe and other groups that lived nearer the coast.
Given all of the potential information that could be unlocked by realizing the shell was in fact a musical instrument, it would be interesting to get a peek at what archaeologists in the year 20,000 AD, if any exist, make of a kazoo.
2 comments:
I love stories like this.
it's less horrifying than the one that made the rounds of twitter about how they re-created a pharaoh's larynx from a CT scan and blew air through it to "hear his voice" and got exactly one sound, that was not at all unlike a scream.
It's kind of amazing to think how long of a time elapsed between the last person to play the shell back when it was made and now.
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