We have to locate ourselves between the French regions of Haute-Garonne and Ariège, where the Marsoulas cave is located. This is where a team of researchers from the University of Toulouse (France) has found a horn made from a large shell that ancient Europeans used to play musical notes approximately 18,000 years ago, according to their study published in the journal Science Advances.
One of the most famous prehistoric caves in France
While it is not known exactly how they used the horn, in historical and modern cultures, the shells have served as musical instruments, calling or signaling devices, and sacred or magical objects, the researchers say. Archaeologist Carole Fritz claims that these ancient Europeans played the marine horn inside Marsoulas Cave, whose wall paintings depict humans, animals, and geometric shapes.
Marsoulas Cave was the first decorated cave to be found in the Pyrenees. Discovered in 1897, it bears witness to the beginning of the Magdalenian culture in this region , at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. During an inventory of material from archaeological excavations, mostly at the Muséum de Toulouse, scientists examined a large Charonia lampas (sea snail) shell, which had been overlooked after being discovered in 1931. It is now believed to be the oldest wind instrument of its kind. Measures 12 ” tall, up to 7 ” in diameter, and up to 0.8 ” thick.
Conch shells as wind instruments date back thousands of years as we have seen. Basically, the shell is blown like a trumpet through a hole in the needle and the sound is adjusted by hand into the opening of the needle. The more surface the hand covers, the lower the note.
Precisely to confirm the hypothesis that this conch was used to produce sounds, the scientists enlisted the help of a trumpeter . According to the study, this ancient snail shell can produce sounds close to three notes: C (C), D (D) and C sharp (high C).
Microscopic examinations using photogrammetry techniques also determined that someone cut the narrow end of the shell to create a small opening. They suspect that a cylindrical mouthpiece, possibly a hollow bird bone, was inserted into the hole. The brown traces of a resin or wax around the artificial opening appear to serve as a glue or adhesive for the mouthpiece.
The shell had also been decorated with a red pigment (from hematite, a common mineral) in a style that matches the wall art within Marsoulas Cave, indicating the shell’s status as a symbolic object, according to the team.
“As far as we know, the Marsoulas shell is unique in the prehistoric context, however, not only in France, but on the scale of Palaeolithic Europe and perhaps the world,” the authors state.
And it is that, to date, flutes have only been discovered in earlier European contexts of the Upper Palaeolithic, while the conches found outside of Europe are much more recent. 3D prints of the Marsoulas snail will allow researchers to further explore whether it had a mouthpiece and see if it can be used to produce other notes.
If the shell horn was used, as it seems, as a musical instrument, it is certainly not the oldest. That honor goes to the bone and ivory flutes that Europeans made about 40,000 years ago.
Referencia: Carole Fritz el al., “First record of the sound produced by the oldest Upper Paleolithic seashell horn,” Science Advances (2021). advances.sciencemag.org/lookup … .1126/sciadv.abe9510
