The sound of Palaeolithic music
February 12, 2021CNRS
Although large conch-shaped shells still serve as musical instruments in various regions of the Pacific and Caribbean, their use in the Palaeolithic had never been established. For the first time, scientists have produced a sound from the oldest conch horn ever found in Europe. The object, which dates back 18,000 years, was discovered in the painted cave of Marsoulas in the French Pyrenees mountain range.
Lying unnoticed for years in the collections of Toulouse’s Museum of Natural History, in southwestern France, a hidden treasure has finally given up its secrets. The true purpose of the 30-centimetre-long shell, described as a “water pitcher” when it was discovered in 1931 at the entrance to the Marsoulas painted cave in the Pyrenees, was revealed by archaeologists, whose findings have been published in the journal Science1. Far from being used as a container, the conch belonging to the species Charonia lampas – a mollusc still found today in the Bay of Biscay, along the western coast of France and northern coast of Spain – astonishingly turns out to be a wind instrument. This makes it the first shell trumpet from the Palaeolithic period ever identified. The object dates from the time the Pyrenean painted cave was first occupied by Magdalenian humans 18,000 years ago.