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Stone Age Soundtracks: The Acoustic Archaeology of Ancient Sites

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Stone Age Soundtracks discusses an exciting new field in the investigation of ancient sites: acoustic archaeology. The discipline brings to light a vanished aspect of the past with the aid of computer modeling and sophisticated equipment to calculate frequencies and resonances. These investigations indicate that stone chambers, temples, dolmens, menhirs and even Paleolithic caves were deliberately constructed or used in ways that would enhance the ritual sounds produced within them. There is evidence that hallucinogenic substances and music were used together. Devereaux speculates about the origins of music and a lost world where echoes were regarded as the voices of the spirits. This knowledge assists in our understanding of the biochemical and physiological reasons that lie behind the reasons why dance, rhythm and percussion are such powerful human experiences.

In his book The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, David Lewis-Williams theorizes that the people of the Upper Paleolithic harnessed altered states of consciousness to fashion their society and used imagery as a means of establishing and defining social relationships. Cro-Magnon man had a more advanced neurological system and order of consciousness than the Neanderthals, and experienced shamanic trances and vivid mental imagery. It was important for them to paint images on cave walls which served as a membrane between the everyday world and the realm of the spirit. Graham Hancock supports Lewis-Williams' theory and personally used mind-altering substances to prove it in a series of experiments which he so lucidly describes in his absorbing book Supernatural.

Part 1 overviews the mysticism, history & anthropology of sound in order to imagine how our ancestors experienced it. It deals with matters like the magic of sound, acoustical effects on the mind & body, oracle sites, spirits and sound with reference to the Greek goddess Echo, sound in initiatory, spiritual and ceremonial rituals, words of power, whistling, brain rhythms, vibrational frequencies for various parts of the body, poetry, song, Gothic cathedrals and altered states of consciousness. The plates in this part includes full-color images of the Colossi of Memnon, rock carvings , shamans, Greek temples, Neolithic tombs, dolmens, and Newgrange site in Ireland. Particularly interesting sections include the one on Infrasound (below 20Hz, the hearing ability of the human ear, but one can feel it), on brainwave states, the resonation of body parts, and music and mysticism. Locations tested and reported on include Stonehenge and other spots on the British Isles, French and Spanish Paleolithic caves, Grecian and Mayan temples.

The second part focuses on acoustical probing and research in megalithic tombs, the methods employed and the instruments used. It contains information on frequencies, extensive discoveries at Newgrange, the design of oracle chambers and the Hemholz Resonance. The results of research on Orkney Island and Stonehenge are provided. In the Paleolithic caves of France, it emerged that rock paintings are situated in key resonant locations; the same is true even in open-air rock shelters. Color plates include photos of sites in Orkney, Australia, Brittany in France, and Spain and Mexico. The Cave of Altamira by Antonio Beltran is a most impressive showcase of these prehistoric painted caves. Amongst the musical instruments discovered in Paleolithic caves are bone flutes, whistles and drums. Richard Rudgley explores objects possibly used for creating sound that date back to 50 000 BP in chapter 15 of his book The Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age. Finally, Devereux examines sites of interest in California and Bolivia.

The text is enhanced by black & white illustrations, musical notations, the aforementioned striking color plates and separate blocks of copy dealing with particular aspects of the research. There are also bibliographic references & notes and an index. Being a pioneering work in this exciting new discipline, Stone Age Soundtracks is a very valuable resource and I highly recommend it to those who are interested in mankind's unknown past, and to musicologists, ethnologists and archaeologists.

Paul Devereux has written an exemplary guide for those interested in researching this amazing topic. Much detail is given in terms of the ritual history of sound and it's many uses. While the analysis of sound throughout the ages is somewhat elementary it does do a fine job of getting one who is unfamiliar with the shamanic history of sound up to speed.
As an amatuer musician of tribal instruments, I was ingrossed with Mr. Devereuxes findings. I hope in the future there will be many more experiments into the exciting Archeology of sound.
A great book...highly recommended.

As a amateur student of archeology I've read a lot of books that seem to take the same old tired take on ancient sites, but here's a whole new way to examine human history!

Studies of human evolution often focus on material objects such as skeletons, stone tools, or other early artifacts. Somehow, however, humans developed "culture" in the sense of art, music, and poetry -- the topics studied in the Humanities division of our universities. Getting a grasp at the early stages of this development (before writing left us more a complete description) is often limited to superficial observations of such wonders as the paintings in prehistoric caves (of which the most astounding example may well be the "Hall of the Bulls" in Lascaux).

Undeterred by our inability to HEAR it, in STONE AGE SOUNDTRACKS: THE ACOUSTIC ARCHEAEOOGY OF ANCIENT SITES, Devereux has the courage, intellect, and scientific acumen to introduce us to the music of Stone Age humans. Discovering the echo-chamber effects from passages deep within Lascaux (which could make it appear that the cave itself was answering the early humans engaged in activities that included music) is but one of many exceptionally important findings summarized and analyzed in this extraordinary book. It now seems clear that caves like Lascaux were not (as once thought) a location devoted solely to preparing men for the hunt. That early hunch doesn't explain footprints of very young children or -- more important for the origins of musical performance -- flutes made from hollowed deer leg bones. We learn that some of these flutes can be played today, revealing that they are accurately tuned to the key of C. I've seen such a flute in a museum, but learning what has now been found or conjectured about these instruments changes radically our image of early humans.

Far from the shaggy brute of many sketches, our distant ancestors were already engaged in some sort of "cultural" activity that included musical performance. Moreover, the mysterious designs in cave walls, such as the incised patterns in the narrow and almost totally inaccessible passageway hidden deep in the recesses of Lascaux make it clear that some early humans engaged in SOME activity in areas of the cave that obviously had a different function that the "Great Hall" with its magnificant images of bulls. Then we discover that dolmens in the British Isles had acoustic functions such as the concave shaping of a pillar at Stonehenge which has the effect of producing acoustic magnification (as measured by the latest acoustic techniques).

The evidence of properties linked to musical performance in early human groups extend to sites in the New World and Australia as well as the Mediterranean basin and the British Isles. A good example is provided by stone cairns in Cornwall, England which have "chambers" that were long thought to have served merely as burial sites. Speaking of one of numerous surveys of these locations, Devereux notes that "despite the various monuments being of markedly different sizes, shapes and construction, all the sites visited in the study yielded resonance frequencies in a narrow band (95-120Hz), most often clustering in the precise zone of 110-112Hz. If these chambers were designed solely for the silent dead, it is odd that they should repeatedly be found to be so ideally suitable for the performance of the living human voice. The potential implication is quite clear: <these "tombs"saw ritual activities, and they were conducted by men">(pp. 88-89). [NOTE:WORDS BETWEEN <> ARE IN ITALICS.]

If Devereux only had a single example of this sort, one might think he was imposing his hypothesis on highly dubious evidence. After the vast number of examples collected in STONE AGE SOUNDTRACKS, I was convinced: our view of hominid evolution can't continue to be limited to the silent evidence of stone tools or other material artifacts. Stone Age humans had rituals and other occasions in which they used musical instruments and engaged in other vocal activities that had MEANING. The most obvious interpretation concerns the activities of shamans like those found among primitive tribes still found in remote environments. Lest this seem mere "interpretation," the reader has a chance to contemplate a photo of an "Ancient American Indian rock carving at McCoy Spring, California, showing a shaman emerging from a crack in the rock as a snake and turning back into a man."(p. 65).

It follows that STONE AGE SOUNDTRACKS is required reading for anyone seriously interested (or merely curious) to know more about cultural aspects of human behavior that can be traced to our prehistoric ancestors. Each time I look at something in Devereux's book, I learn more. Even if future discoveries by archeologists require modifications of specific interpretations, one conclusion is now hard to deny. By the Stone Age, at this stage in hominid evolution our human ancestors had more complex CULTURAL as well as technological capabilities than has hitherto been assumed by most social scientists.

While obviously of great importance for students of music, cultural or physical anthropology, and psychology, I found important implications for my field of political science. Some forms of social organization have far greater antiquity than hitherto imagined in my discipline. Even assuming that the musical activities of stone age groups were primarily conducted by a shaman for ritual purposes (as distinct from leaders seeking to inform or command obedience), humans have come together in groups to listen and to celebrate some form of collective behavior since high antiquity. However the concepts of "human nature" developed by various political philosophers differ in accuracy, the images of the "state of nature" in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau are all -- in some decisive respects -- simply false. If shamanism and the role of the shaman dates to the stone age, it can now no longer be denied that the empirical evidence supports Aristotle's view of man as a "political animal." The implications of this conclusion make STONE AGE SOUNDTRACKS one of the most important books I've read in the last decade.


Roger D. Masters
Research Professor of Government and Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor Emeritus
Department of Government, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755