The shell was overlooked when it was found in the Marsoulas Cave in the Pyrenees in 1931, but researchers at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France; the Museum of Toulouse; the University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès; and the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques-Chirac have released an audio recording as part of a new study released Wednesday.
The people who made the instrument were probably hunter-gatherers. Credit: © Carole Fritz et al. 2021 / Gilles Tosello
The shell of the tip of the sea snail (Charonia lampas) is broken, forming an opening 1.4 inches in diameter. The tip is the hardest part of the shell, researchers said in a press release, so the rupture is not accidental.
There is also evidence of cutting, drilling and decoration with hematite, a red pigment used in cave paintings that make the Marsoulas Cave famous.
The researchers worked with a player to test their hypothesis that the shell was used to produce sounds, with the musician able to make sounds close to notes C, C-Sharp and D.
The fact that the opening is uneven and covered with an organic coating made researchers think that a nozzle would have originally been fixed.
The presence of mouthpieces in other shells around the world adds weight to this interpretation, said Gilles Tosello, co-author of the study and archaeologist at the University of Toulouse.
According to the researchers, carbon datings made with charcoal and bear bone from the same archaeological stratum shown by the carcass are objects from 18,000 years ago. This makes the shell the oldest wind instrument of its kind.
However, the people who did it didn’t necessarily use the shell to do what we consider to be music, Tosello told CNN.
“It could have been used as a communication tool,” he said, explaining that it could have been used in art-related rituals inside the cave.
Researchers also found similarities with materials found in caves on the Atlantic coast in northern Spain, giving weight to the idea that these people were nomadic hunter-gatherers who moved between the Atlantic coast and the Pyrenees, he said. Tosello.
They would have had to move because they would have run out of animals to hunt if they stayed in one place too long, he explained.
Now, researchers will work on an accurate 3D replica of the shell to learn more about a small 0.4-inch-diameter hole in the body, Tosello told CNN. They will also investigate how far the sound produced by the shell can travel.