Musical Cave Paintings

Fascinating stuff. According to a new National Geographic article, early man created cave paintings in pre-determined locations that amplified or echoed human voices or musical instruments.

According to the article:

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.

"In the cave of Niaux in Ariège (France), 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.

Read the full article here.