Among other things, the discovery could help to explain why so much early cave art showed human hands and images of herds of running animals. Steven Waller of Rock Art Acoustics suggests that the echoes and reverberation of things like hand clapping in a cave would have been misinterpreted as being “supernatural.”
“Ancient mythology explained echoes from the mouths of caves as replies from spirits, so our ancestors may have made cave paintings in response to these echoes and their belief that echo spirits inhabited rocky places such as caves or canyons,” Waller explained in a press release.
Echoes of clapping hands can sound similar to hoof beats, he said, which could be why so many running herds of animals were featured on cave walls.
“Many ancient cultures attributed thunder in the sky to ‘hoofed thunder gods,’ so it makes sense that the reverberation within the caves was interpreted as thunder and inspired paintings of those same hoofed thunder gods on cave walls,” he said.
Waller added, “This theory is supported by acoustic measurements, which show statistically significant correspondence between the rock art sites and locations with the strongest sound reflection.”
Sounds like this are now called “auditory illusions.” Early leaders appear to have often used them. For example, prior research determined that hand clapping at the pyramid of Kukulkan in Chichen Itza, Mexico, produces an echo resembling the call of the quetzal, a sacred bird thought to hold mythical powers. Priests clapped and then interpreted what the “mystical” echo meant.
Waller even thinks that the placement of stones at Stonehenge could have been done with “supernatural” sound effects in mind. He traveled to the megalith and had two flute players play the same note at the same time in a nearby open space. Other blindfolded individuals listened to the results.
Read more at Discovery News
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