Stonehenge Inspired By Sound Illusion, Archaeologist Suggests

By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 02/16/2012 06:16 PM EST on LiveScience

Theories about the purpose of Stonehenge range from a secular calendar to a place of spiritual worship. Now, an archaeologist suggests that the Stonehenge monument in southern England may have been an attempt to mimic a sound-based illusion.

If two pipers were to play in a field, observers walking around the musicians would hear a strange effect, said Steven Waller, a doctoral researcher at Rock Art Acoustics USA, who specializes in the sound properties of ancient sites, or archaeoacoustics. At certain points, the sound waves produced by each player would cancel each other out, creating spots where the sound is dampened.

It's this pattern of quiet spots that may have inspired Stonehenge, Waller told an audience Thursday (Feb. 16) in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The theory is highly speculative, but modern-day experiments do reveal that the layout of the Stonehenge ruins and other rock circles mimics the piper illusion, with stones instead of competing sound waves blocking out sounds made in the center of the circle.

In support of the theory, Waller pointed to myths linking Stonehenge with music, such as the traditional nickname for stone circles in Great Britain: "piper stones." One legend holds that Stonehenge was created when two magic pipers led maidens into the field to dance and then turned them to stone. [Album: 7 Wonders of the Ancient World]

Waller experimented by having blindfolded participants walk into a field as two pipers played. He asked the volunteers to tell him whenever they thought a barrier existed between them and the sound. There were no barriers in the field, but acoustic "dead spots" created by sound-wave interference certainly gave the volunteers the impression that there were.   

"They drew structures, archways and openings that are very similar to Stonehenge," Waller said.

Waller believes the people who built Stonehenge more than 5,000 years ago may have heard this sound-canceling illusion during ceremonies with musicians and thought it mystical, spurring the creation of the stone circle.

Though the theory is unlikely to settle the mystery of Stonehenge, Waller said he hopes to highlight the importance of considering sound in archaeology. Rock art sites are often in areas where cave acoustics are particularly prone to echoes, he said, suggesting that ancient people found meaning in sound.

"Nobody has been paying attention to sound," Waller said. "We've been destroying sound. In some of the French [rock art] caves, they've widened the tunnels to build little train tracks to take the tourists back – thereby ruining the acoustics that could have been the whole motivation in the first place."

Keep clicking for 13 photos of modern-day druids celebrating the winter solstice at Stonehenge:

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

• Image Gallery: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth
• Gallery: Aerial Photos Reveal Mysterious Stone Structures
• 7 Mysterious Archeological Discoveries

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Related on HuffPost:

Comments

[didereaux]

10:49 AM on 03/01/2012

The scientist who wrote this paper chose this subject because the study of how people use toilet paper had already been don.

[Claudia L]

02:38 PM on 02/27/2012

"At certain points, the sound waves produced by each player would cancel each other out, creating spots where the sound is dampened."

I think that's called Phase Cancellation - sometimes it happen during combat. You could step into a totally silent hole. ( also Battle at Petersburg)

http://www.recordingeq.com/articles/321eq.html

[rsalier]

01:36 AM on 02/24/2012

As an archaeologist myself, I am open to the potential use of sound as part of the conceptual building of the Stonehenge. After all sound in many forms are critical to humans, especially songs and chants. Most modern religions still use music as part of their rituals. The use of stones, logs and other natural objects as part of music making is well known. The use of the stones as a sound baffle would fit into this category as well. Humans are remarkably clever and observant. Little is missed by these folks since their lives and livelihood depended on it.

While the henge is view with mystery by many, to me, it is a multipurpose tool used in part for religious purposes, "secular" purposes and finally in all likelihood some other rather mundane purposes. We need to remember that these are all bound together and were part and parcel the same.

And while those of us who are interested in the "ancient aliens", that is all well and good but the stones were moved by human power from the Percelli Hills, barged up the river, then skidded across the plane to the hill atop which the stand today. Humans have the ingenuity to build these things, we just need to wake up to the fact that we can do a lot of things if we put our mind power behind it. It is not unlike watching humans on the moon. And with out the help of little "grey" men.

[bi-poplar]

01:18 PM on 02/23/2012

Sound, sight, astronomy, seasons, cycles, weather, birth, death - all these things were a part of "primitive" cultures and all of them probably figured into an undertaking as massive as Stonehenge. We can guess, but we'll probably never know for certain.

[crabbyguy75]

03:25 AM on 02/23/2012

It was made and used by Aliens not us. (that's my inner geek typing)

[libwingoflibwing]

05:09 PM on 02/22/2012

I think this sounds reasonable. It's a sound idea. In fact it's music to my ears.

[imonlyhereforthelaughs]

01:54 PM on 02/22/2012

Silly. Why not say it obstructs vision at certain points, then claim it must have been an ancient movie projector?

[Sunwyn Ravenwood]

04:35 AM on 02/21/2012

Diodorus Siculus :
"Hekataios and certain others say that in the regions beyond the land of the Keltoi there lies in Okeanos an island no smaller than Sikelia. This island is situated in the north and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, the island is both fertile and productive of every crop, and since it has an unusually temperate climate it produces two harvests each year.

Apollo is honoured among them above all other gods,,,and there is also on the island both a magnificent sacred precinct of Apollon and a notable temple which is adorned with many votive offerings and is spherical in shape. Furthermore, a city is there which is sacred to this god, and the majority of its inhabitants are players on the cithara; and these continually play on this instrument in the temple and sing hymns of praise to the god, glorifying his deeds.

They say also that the moon, as viewed from this island appears to be but a little distance from the earth and to have upon it prominences, like those of the earth, which are visible to the eye. The account is also given that the god visits the island every nineteen years, the period in which the return of the stars to the same place in the heavens is accomplished; and for this reason the nineteen-year period is called by the Greeks the ‘year of Meton.’ "

[Ana4]

03:52 PM on 03/01/2012

The County Ross official records also mention that the stone henge at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis was dedicated to Apollo.

[AllegroTroppo]

12:04 AM on 02/21/2012

Nonsense is nonsense but sponsored and funded nonsense is academic research.

[Ana4]

03:54 PM on 03/01/2012

And yet you type on a computer hooked to an internet that research scientists who were academically literate came up with funded by government money. Strange.

[AllegroTroppo]

12:03 AM on 02/21/2012

Oh so those stones are just giant primordial speakers,
If you look reeeeelay carefully you can see JBL log in runic alphabet. The little ones are the NS10s.

[libwingoflibwing]

05:11 PM on 02/22/2012

No, they're an EQ system.

[Ana4]

03:57 PM on 03/01/2012

Stones resonate; silica crystals hold memory and reverberation is amplified when stones are set in a circle...go there and check it out.

[Brent Beach]

10:55 PM on 02/20/2012

Interesting theory, but I think he missed the beat, just a little.
For a cancelling effect to occur the pipes would have to be producing exactly the same sound a half a wavelength apart. Not likely to happen for long enough for anyone to hear it.
However, with just one piper, and sound bouncing off two walls that were exactly the right - slightly different - distance apart, you could get a half phase delay quite easily.
However, it would be an artifact not by design. It ancient times it could only happen by chance and not by design - they could not have built to the required precision.

[Jzen78]

09:58 AM on 02/21/2012

Really, that is your argument, they couldn't have created the required precision. This same argument is used about many ancient structures, that ancient civilizations didn't have the required technology or understanding to create them. The Pyramids in Egypt, Southwest Asia, and South America. The "landing strips" and pictographs of South America that can only be seen from the air. The sphinx of Giza. The idols of Easter island. All these things, and many others, have had the same statements made of them, yet they still stand today proof that these technologies and the understand of the math and science to create these structures existed. To assume that they did not have the same understanding of acoustics would be naive given all "impossible" feats of construction that survive today.

[Claudia L]

02:39 PM on 02/27/2012

http://www.recordingeq.com/articles/321eq.html

Phase Cancellation

[sculptingman]

02:12 PM on 02/20/2012

People seem to keep looking for a mystery that's already been solved. For an agrarian community, being able to have a calendar is critical. If you don't know the time of year, you don't know when it's optimal to plant. In Egypt, the Nile Flood provided this marker, and was soon associated with celestial alignments.
In present day England, the only means of determining an accurate date was to pay attention to celestial alignments and that is the primary function around which the various henges were designed... certainly this core function got embroidered with mystery, pomp and ceremony and imbued with all manner of complex cultural meanings... that is what people do around everything, especially those things that only a select few even comprehend. They create a priesthood, a religion, to wow, control and placate the masses.
The specifics of ceremonial elaboration are interesting but fundamentally meaningless, as they all serve the same purpose and almost certainly changed over the centuries such sites were in use. Certainly they were tied into birth and death, certainly conflated with drought, plenty, illness and fortune...
What matters is that such structures gave the power of knowledge that affected the survival of a culture to its ruling class, and that is why so much energy went into making them impressive to those who were so ruled.
You don't build such a thing for the way it echos.

[williamabn]

02:06 PM on 02/20/2012

Probably put there in the late 1700s to attract tourists . Hea , It worked !

[williamabn]

02:01 PM on 02/20/2012

And no one knows what or why its there . Wooo , lets just be like the sheeple and get all dressed up and play pray and dance around . Yep , That won't make us look like morons ... Much .

[bi-poplar]

01:25 PM on 02/23/2012

Kind of like praying to a zombie and eating his flesh and drinking his blood to be granted eternal life. Not ridiculous at all, sheep

[williamabn]

02:03 PM on 02/23/2012

Or The , I'm afraid of ghosts . First your alive , There dead . You have the upper hand ! You just explain : When I'm a ghost and you bothered me when I was alive... I'm kicking your ghost butt .

[ChicagoBob]

01:27 AM on 02/20/2012

Some say vinyl is better than digital.

Is stone then better than vinyl?

[sculptingman]

01:55 PM on 02/20/2012

no, but vinyl definitively is better than digital at 44khz.
Super Audio CDs come pretty close to vinyl is sound accuracy but still can't match the dynamic range of vinyl.