An 18,000-year-old seashell, an instrument of …

After nearly 80 years of its discovery, French scientists have revealed that a large ornate seashell can be considered the oldest known wind instrument. The group of experts confirmed the hypothesis that in ancient times the snail found was used to produce sounds, after analyzing the characteristics of the element found, modified by the human hand for this particular purpose.

The French cave of Marsoulas, between Haute-Garonne and Ariège, it was the first decorated cave to be found in the Pyrenees. Discovered in 1897, the cave testifies to the beginning of the Magdalenian culture in this region, at the end of the last glacial maximum. During an inventory of archaeological excavation material, most of which is kept at the Toulouse Museum, scientists examined a large shell of “ Charonia lampas ”, which had been largely neglected when it was discovered in 1931.

The tip of the shell is broken off, forming an opening 3.5 centimeters in diameter. Since this is the hardest part of the shell, the breakage is clearly not accidental. At the opposite end, the opening of the case shows traces of rework by cutting and a scanner revealed that one of the first coils is pierced. Finally, the shell was decorated with a red pigment (hematite), characteristic of the Marsoulas cave, which indicates its status as a symbolic object.

C, C sharp and D

For confirm the hypothesis that this sea snail was used to produce sound, scientists from the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Toulouse Museum, the Toulouse-Jean Jaurès University and the Quai Branly-Jacques-Chirac Museum have had the help of a trumpeter, who managed to produce three close sounds at the C, C sharp and D notes. The sound can be heard here.

As the opening is irregular and covered with an organic coating, the researchers assume that it also had a mouthpiece, as is the case with the more recent snails in the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. The 3D prints of the caratol will let you explore this trail and see if it can be used to produce other notes, according to a CNRS press release.

The cave’s first carbon-14 dating, carried out on a piece of coal and a fragment of bear bone of the same archaeological level as the shell, gave a date of about 18,000 years. This makes the Marsoulas sea snail the the oldest wind instrument of its kind. To date, the flutes have only been discovered in Upper Paleolithic European contexts and the snails found outside of Europe are much more recent.