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Mini-model of Stonehenge reveals how voices would have carried in original ancient monument
A team of researchers at the University of Salford in the U.K. has revealed how voices would have sounded 4,000 years ago inside of the Stonehenge monument. The group made a recording of their efforts and posted the results on SoundCloud.
Stonehenge is, of course, a monument built roughly 5,000 years ago by Neolithic people for unknown reasons—they left behind no written records. In modern times, the monument has become famous the world over, and attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. The researchers explored what a human voice would have sounded like inside the monument during its heyday. To find out, they applied a modern technique that has been used to help architects build concert halls with optimal sound characteristics. The technique involves building a small-scale model of a building prior to construction and blasting sounds at it at 12 times their normal frequency in a sound chamber to overcome the size differences.
[...] The researchers claim the voice in the recording sounds like it would have were the team member to have stood in the center of the monument while speaking all those years ago. They note that despite large spaces between the stones, a person's voice would have reverberated around the monument, producing an echoing effect. They also suggest it is not likely that the people who built the monument knew what impact it would have on a speaker's voice, but point out that it seems likely they would have taken advantage of the impressive acoustics.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday July 15 2019, @02:30PM (1 child)
How can these researchers do this without first knowing know the properties of an alien /Atlantean voicebox?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 16 2019, @11:10AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday July 15 2019, @03:00PM (3 children)
It's not like Stonehenge was the first henge ever built - the henge-building cultures had been around for a long time already. If it really is a genuine effect, I'm sure somebody had noticed the effect over the preceding millenia, even if they didn't understand exactly why it was happening. I'm sure it added to the feel of magic around the place, and probably helped contribute to further henge-building.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday July 15 2019, @05:43PM (1 child)
It is way better than Woodhenge or Strawhenge.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @09:44PM
But lesser than Weedhenge.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday July 16 2019, @03:24AM
Another thing, Stonehenge has been repeatedly rebuilt and remodeled over the millennia, most recently in the 1920s [fishki.net] (ignore the conspiracy-theory commentary, just look at the photos). So when they used a "model of Stonehenge", which version was it, given that we have only a vague idea of what it originally looked like?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @03:06PM (6 children)
"They also suggest it is not likely that the people who built the monument knew what impact it would have on a speaker's voice,"
So many ancient momuments around the world tuned to specific frequencies and they all didn't know. Yeah right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @05:37PM
i agree. furthermore, somebody likely knows why stonehenge was constructed and what it was used for, but they keep that info to themselves. no need for an educated slave class.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @05:39PM
Yeah, because caves weren't invented yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @07:07PM (2 children)
No, they did not know. They literally, actually, really, thought that it was a magic being doing it. Because somehow everything was caused by their magic being. They thought shit along the lines of "I've built this magnificent structure and now god is happy with me! I can tell, because he makes my voice sound all big and stuff!"
Sadly there are still lots of fucking shitheads who still believe retarded crap like this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @07:47PM (1 child)
Again... Yeah, because caves weren't invented yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @01:37PM
I'll have what this troglodyte is having...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 15 2019, @07:49PM
I agree with you (I think) that it's possible ancient cultures had recognized the echoing property of certain structures and perhaps tried to recreate some form of it here.
However...
What's this "specific frequencies" stuff about? I didn't see anything in TFA about anything attuned to "specific frequencies." Just that human voices likely fell in the (presumably wide) set of frequencies that would be reflected enough to produce an echo effect.
When you say "tuned to specific frequencies," it makes me think of all the ancient alien BS or something, where "researchers" claim to have isolated some specific frequency numbers and measurements that show the coordinates the ancient spaceships came from or whatever. When I was in middle school, I read some crappy book about "Mysteries of the Great Pyramid" that claimed there were specific numbers encoded in the structure, frequencies it would resonate at, etc. I thought it was pretty cool -- until I grew up and realized one could find such patterns in just about any structure, as it's easy to find "patterns" when you're willing to see a pattern in anything. It's numerological BS, or, to use the modern scientific parlance describing cognitive biases, it's known as apophenia [wikipedia.org], specifically in this case a type of pareidolia [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday July 15 2019, @03:26PM (1 child)
It was recreated as a set piece that was used in a gig in the movie This Is Spinal Tap.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Monday July 15 2019, @05:33PM
Did it make their voices go to eleven?
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Monday July 15 2019, @05:27PM (3 children)
The real reason for such projects is usually to utilize excess capacity.
Pyramids and such are relatively harmless tools compared to wars that we use to solve the issue.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 15 2019, @11:24PM (2 children)
I agree that it's wrong to say the purposes of these monuments is a complete mystery. We can make some shrewd guesses.
However, keeping idle hands busy doesn't make much sense. Even today with all the modern conveniences we have, people constantly complain of a lack of time. It's more helpful to think of the needs of people. What could Stone Age people want? It's a short and simple list: food, shelter, safety, health, sex, and a competitive edge. They're constantly scrambling just to survive to put much effort into busywork. Probably people could not be persuaded to work on Stonehenge on that basis, they would have to be duped into the labor in some fashion. Of course, religion springs to mind. But even if the priests were mainly interested in keeping hands from being idle, they had to have a pretty good story. And even the most dimwitted priests aren't going to waste all that effort just to move piles of rock back and forth, no, they're going to want all that effort to go towards some sort of glorification.
The mystery that may never be solved is figuring out what crazy, convoluted religious rationale (irrationale?) was employed. Was Stonehenge a magic circle that made hunting easier? Was it to awe and cow potential enemies? Was it a boss man's pet project, meant to display his wealth and power over others? Maybe it was for communicating or appeasing dead ancestors? Why did they think a circle of arches was the best shape for a monument? It does appear to have some astronomical meaning, but just to be a giant sundial and seasonal time piece, seems over the top for that. Whatever the exact reasons, we can pretty well guess that it's something along those lines. Very unlikely that it was a scientific experiment, or a friendly game to see who could build an arch the fastest, or merely busywork.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Tuesday July 16 2019, @12:00AM (1 child)
Most people overestimate progress and underestimate primitive life. You are giving an example saying:
Meantime primitive people had much more time and way more enjoyable working environments. They generally worked fewer hours than modern people and their work was not demanding.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/200907/play-makes-us-human-v-why-hunter-gatherers-work-is-play [psychologytoday.com]
"Constant vacation" their life was and required skills but not much labor, while we are slaves pure and simple; brain washed slaves at that.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:06PM
Unless they were persistence hunters ;).