Evidence of Ancient Cave Music by Early Humans

A darkened theater, a little church, a massive cathedral--these are some of the enclosed places that people commonly use to capture reverberating sounds and achieve an engulfing vibratory experience initiated by musical activity. Archaeological evidence shows that the yearning for such an experience goes back to Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) people, who performed music ceremonies in natural enclosures, caves.

In the famous cave of Les Trois-Frères, in Ariège, France, there is a rock painting, dated between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago, of a part-human, part-bison figure, variously described by scholars as a sorcerer, a magician, or a shaman, who appears to be performing music among wild animals. He seems to be singing, dancing, clapping his hands, and playing a musical instrument, usually described as a musical bow but also, because it is near the figure's mouth, as possibly a flute. If the instrument is a musical bow, it is similar to one still used by the southern African San (Bushmen). Some scholars interpret the figure as a man who is dressed in animal skins and horns and who is performing a music-based ritual that may be intended to have a magic effect on one or more of the animals, perhaps a mythic capture of an animal's spirit.

Other scholars, utilizing a neuropsychological approach, interpret such composite creatures as shamans partially transformed, during their music-induced trances, into animals. Shamanic hallucinations are hinted at in other types of Paleolithic rock art as well. For example, in many paintings and engravings, animals seem to float on the rock surface and to be independent of a real-world landscape. Often the animals exist without regard to true relative size, mammoths, for example, being smaller than horses. Animals also consort in unnatural groupings, horses and bison, for example, being placed together. Such illustrations do not portray real animals in a real landscape. They are more like visions of underworld spirits having supernatural powers that could benefit humans, especially the entranced shamans themselves.

Paleolithic people probably believed that caves were passages leading to an underworld of spirits and spirit-animals. Cave rocks and walls retain signs of having been treated like thin membranes between humans and the realm below. Surviving Paleolithic evidence in caves shows that people touched, pierced, marked, engraved, and painted surfaces in various ways, sometimes interpeting rock features as partial forms of underworld creatures.

Such image-laden caves were almost certainly the sites of Paleolithic music-based ritual activities, as illlustrated by the cave painting at Les Trois-Frères. These echoing enclosures served as natural forms of the houses of worship that arose later in human history, and the cave music itself was an early form of sonic communion with the spirit forces on whose goodwill humans depended.

Physical evidence of that cave music is still available. Archaeologists who studied three caves in the Ariège department of France discovered that acoustics played a significant part in determining where the Paleolithic paintings in the caves were located. Experiments proved that in some places ("points of resonance") the caves resonate in response to certain tones. After studying the points of resonance and the locations of the cave paintings, the researchers came to three main conclusions: most of the paintings are at or very near points of resonance, most of the points of resonance correspond to locations with paintings, and the locations of some paintings can be explained only by the resonance of those particular locations, such as one especially effective point of resonance that is marked simply by red dots because there is not enough room for a full painted figure.

The paintings were created about 20,000 years ago, so music-based ceremonies may well have taken place in the caves at that time. Ritualists may have used drums, bone flutes, and whistle instruments in their ceremonies (bone flutes, for example, have been found at several Paleolithic sites of roughly the same age as the cave paintings). However, the most powerful resonating effect would have been achieved by chanting with the rich, wide-ranging human voice.

Some archaeologists believe that caves may have been used as musical instruments in another way as well. Stalagmite structures found in caves in France, Spain, and Portugal--whose use has been dated at 30,000 years ago--show signs of ancient decorations, such as red ocher dots, as well as chipped spots and other traces of wear. Because these structures ring with resonant tones when struck, archaeologists believe that prehistoric people may have ritualistically "played" the stalagmites like chimes.

Principal source:

Music of the Universe. http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/darryllyman.

Secondary sources:

Clottes, Jean, and David Lewis-Williams. The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves. Trans. Sophie Hawkes. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

Milius, Susan. "Face the Music." Natural History, Dec. 2001-Jan. 2002, pp. 48+.

Scarre, Chris. "Painting by Resonance." Nature, Mar. 30, 1989, p. 382.

Schneider, Albrecht. "Archaeology of Music in Europe." Europe, ed. Timothy Rice, James Porter, and Chris Goertzen. Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 8. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000.