Toulouse (AFP)
An 18,000-year-old conch, which would be the oldest known wind instrument of this type, has just resounded again in Toulouse, allowing a group of researchers to enrich their knowledge of the "musical palette" of prehistoric men.
"This is the first time that we hear the sound of this shell since that time", explains, showing this piece from the Marsoulas cave (Haute-Garonne), archaeologist Carole Fritz, first signatory of an article on this question published Wednesday in the American scientific journal Science Advances.
As part of this research, a horn player managed to issue with this conch larger and thicker than the current ones (31 cm in height, up to 18 cm in diameter and up to 0.8 cm in thickness ), three sounds close to the notes C, C sharp and D.
This experience "makes it possible to enrich the musical palette that one can imagine for the peoples, the cultures, who lived there 18,000 years ago", affirms for his part the director of the Toulouse Museum, Francis Duranthon, also a signatory of scientific article.
Certainly, "there are vulture bone flutes or others which are older but until then we had no known conch of this age", he adds, in the middle of one of the large rooms. of the Museum.
- 3D and modeling -
To be able to emit these sounds, the men of the time had to modify the original conch.
Thus, the tip of the shell was broken and two circular holes were made inside, "surely to insert a hollow bone allowing you to blow and produce sounds", specifies Guillaume Fleury, also a signatory of the article.
This work is the result of research that could not have been done in the same way when this conch was discovered in 1931. It would not even "have been possible 10 years ago without the use of 3D and the modeling that this allows. Today, with the development of artificial intelligence, we will be able to go even further. These prospects are very exciting for the whole team, "says Ms. Fritz.
"The use of digital technology makes it possible to do things that we could not do before but it does not replace work on objects", warns Mr. Duranthon, however, showing dozens of other objects from from the Marsoulas cave kept in one of the many drawers also devoted to other sites, in a room of the Museum.
These less famous objects are however essential to try to understand a distant cultural universe.
They provide researchers with a more general context that it is essential to know, underlines the Toulouse Museum which inaugurated in 1865 the first gallery in the world devoted to prehistory.
"That's the whole point of museum collections. A lot of times people ask us + what all that old stuff is for. + That's what it's for. It fuels research. When a researcher takes over the study of a site, as we did this time, it comes to consult the old collections collected on this site, "he adds.
- The noise of a subway train -
Researchers believe that the shell may have been used for rituals or ceremonies, as is still the case today in some Polynesian or South American cultures.
With a powerful sound - equivalent in decibels to a metro train - the men of the Magdalenians may have used this shell as an instrument of communication.
"The intensity produced is incredible," says study co-author Philippe Walter, director of the laboratory of molecular and structural archeology at the University of the Sorbonne.
For the next experiments, the researchers will use a 3D printed version of the fragile instrument.
Philippe Walter is convinced that this one can produce many other notes but affirms that this research will not allow to discover what music listened to the Magdalenians.
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