A story was told by the local Aymara Indians to a Spanish traveller who visited Tiahuanaco shortly after the conquest spoke of the city's original foundation in the age of Chamac Pacha, or First Creation,  long before the coming of the Incas. Its earliest inhabitants, they said,  possessed supernatural powers, for which they were able miraculously to lift stones of off the ground, which "...were carried [from the mountain quarries] through the air to the sound of a trumpet". (1)

Mayan legends says that the temple of Uxmal (right), in Mexico was built by a race of dwarves, which apparently only had to whistle and 'heavy rocks would move into place'. It is said that if a person stands at the base of the pyramid-like Temple of the magician and claps their hands the stone structure at the top produces a 'chirping sound' (1)

According to classical Greek writers, Thebes, the capital of Boeotia was founded by Cadmus, a celebrated Phoenician. It was finished off, the story goes, by a son of Jupiter named Amphion, who was able to move large stones to the sound of a lyre of harp, by which manner, he was able to construct the walls of Thebes. Appollonius Rhodius, who lived in the third century BC, poetically recalled in Argonautica how Amphion would sing loud and clear  on his golden lyre' as 'rock twice as large followed his footsteps'. Tradition surrounding Cadmus clearly indicate that Thebes was founded by Phoenician migrants who must have settled there in the third or second millennium BC.

 

In the early 20th century, a Swedish doctor is reputed to have witnessed stone blocks 1.5 metres in length and a metre in height and width, being levitated through the air through the process of sound. (1)

 

Examples of sympathetic vibrations in Prehistoric structures.

At least two structures at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico display unusual and unexplained acoustical properties:

The Great Ball-court: The Great Ball-court is 545 feet long and 225 feet wide overall. It has no vault, no continuity between the walls and is totally open to the sky.

Each end has a raised "temple" area. A whisper from end can be heard clearly at the other end 500 feet away and through the length and breath of the court. The sound waves are unaffected by wind direction or time of day/night. Archaeologists engaged in the reconstruction noted that the sound transmission became stronger and clearer as they proceeded. In 1931 Leopold Stokowski spent 4 days at the site to determine the acoustic principals that could be applied to an open-air concert theatre he was designing.

The Castillo: This structure is a temple that looks like a pyramid and is the one most commonly pictured on travel brochures for the Mexican Yucatan. Apparently if you stand facing the foot of the temple and shout the echo comes back as a piercing shriek. Also, a person standing on the top step can speak in a normal voice and be heard by those at ground level for some distance. This quality is also shared by another Mayan pyramid at Tikal.

If a person stands at the bottom of the Castillo and shouts, the sound will echo as a shriek that comes from the top of the structure. If someone stands on top and speaks in a normal voice, they can be heard on the ground at a distance of 150 metres away. (1)

At Palenque, also in Mexico, it is apparently the case that if three people stand on top of the three pyramids, a three-way conversation can easily be held.

It is said that if a person stands at the base of the pyramid-like Temple of the Magician and claps their hands the stone structure at the top produces a 'chirping sound' (1)

 

New research suggests that the ancient stone circles and burial mounds of north west Europe may have been designed to act as giant loudspeakers to amplify drums being played during rituals. Science correspondent David Whitehouse reports:

Scattered across the landscape of north west Europe are prehistoric monuments from the Neolithic era. Stone circles like Stonehenge as well as covered burial chambers can be over 5,000 years old.

The stones stand silent in the landscape but a new study of these ancient structures has found that they possess some remarkable acoustical properties.

When Aaron Watson of Reading University visited a Neolithic stone circle in Scotland he noticed a curious echo which changed as he moved around inside the circle.

Tests with audio recording equipment showed that the large, flat-sided stones were positioned in such a way to reflect sound towards the centre of the stone circle.

But it is the Neolithic burial mounds that have the strangest properties. They usually consist of a long chamber which is reached by crawling through a small tunnel.

'I was amazed by these caverns,' said University of Reading physicist Dr David Keating.

'The caverns vary in size but their resonant frequencies are very similar. They would amplify a fast drumbeat producing enhanced sounds and echoes during rituals, he added.

Dr Keating suggests that the caverns are designed to generate an acoustic phenomenon called Helmholtz resonance - the hollow type of sound created by blowing a stream of air across the top of an empty bottle.

Calculations suggest that drumming at two beats a second would have caused resonance. Inside the dark chamber with its stale air and presence of the dead, the enhanced sound would have produced an unforgettable experience for Neolithic man.

We now know that sound was important to, and probably considered magical and mysterious by, people at least as far back as the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) painted caves of France and Spain, dating to tens of thousands of years ago. It has been found that some of the stalactites and stalagmites in them are musical, in that they will issue pure bell-, drum- or gong-like notes when struck. Some archaeologists refer to these musical calcite formations as “lithophones”.

Most if not all of these relatively rare features had been painted with geometric signs and animal figures in Stone Age times, and they also display ancient percussion marks – so ancient, in fact, that they are visible only through a covering of calcite deposits.

Currently, Russian and Finnish researchers are studying “palaeoacoustic” ringing rock sites on the shores of Lake Onega in Russia. They have found that the sound these natural stone “drums” make when struck is amplified by the surface of the lake, causing it to carry for kilometres around. The features are surrounded by concentrations of rock art. Similarly, archaeologists in the United States have identified “ringing rocks” – boulders that emit bell- or gong-like sounds when struck. Many of these, too, are marked with rock carvings. (2)

Article: (New Scientist, p. 14, November 28, 1992) - 'The Acoustics Of Rock Art'

S. Waller has visited rock art sites in Europe, North America, and Australia. Standing well back from the painted walls, he claps or creates percussion sounds, and records the echo's bouncing back. It turns out, that rock art seems to be placed intentionally where echo's are not only unusually loud but are also related to the pictured subject matter. Where hoofed animals are depicted, one easily evokes echo's of a running herd. If a person is drawn, the echo's of voices seem to emanate from the picture itself!

"At open air sites with paintings, Waller found that echo's reverberate on average at a level 8 decibels above the level of the background. At sites without art the average was 3 decibels. In deep caves such as Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume in France, echo's in painted chambers produce sound levels of between 23 and 31 decibels. Deep cave walls painted with cats produce sounds from about 1 to 7 decibels. In contrast, surfaces without paint are 'totally flat'."

The Acoustic Qualities of the Stonehenge Bluestones: