The Archaeology of Sound; The Oracle Chamber Of Malta’s Hypogeum Of Ħal-Saflieni

reply to post by burntheships

you can shape the limestone into reflective surfaces much easier then most
texture and density are critical to the regeneration of reflections of some frequencies and the absorption of others

just the difference between a rough stone and a glazed stone can be critical
limestone often makes natural caves that can be modified relatively easily
tunneling through granite...?it can be done but not so easily

Igneous Rock
Granite Grey, black, browns, reds, greens, blue-grey Very Hard X
Sedimentary Rock
RESPIRATOR REQUIRED
Limestone Grey, buff, variegated grey/buff Soft
RESPIRATOR NOT REQUIRED
( great when you are underground and the RESPIRATOR hasn't been invented yet
hard to sing in tune when you have swallowed a few lbs of rock dust

www.thesculpturestudio.com...

so BTS is exactly right





as a sound tech I can tell you for certain
limestone is a warmer softer sounding material
granite is very abrupt and harsh

leolady
reply to post by burntheships

 

Seems they knew more than we can imagine, about sound/vibration/frequency
and our brains.

The hypothalamus (from Greek ὑπό = under and θάλαμος = room, chamber)

source

Ah, yes that is very interesting correlation; Especially so, considering that the
hypothalamus is the area responsible moods, also has vibration-sensing mechanisms.
Vibrations that exist in musical octaves and pitches throughout the entire
frequency spectrum can affect the hypothalamus.

burntheships
reply to post by Harte

 

That was taken from a source material, and its not what the thread is
focused on,

The Greeks probably used limestone

your guess. But nice drive by you missed the OP entirely,
if you imagine the design of the temple and the acoustic
properties were also happenstance you welcome to your ideas.

I made no such claim.

Nice dance - sidestepping my request.

See, it was you that posted what you now claim is "source material" (without, I might add, providing the source.)
Obviously, you can't provide a source because limestone has no such special acoustic properties.

And the next time you're talking out of your butt, you can expect to be called on it again.

Harte

darn straight
I have a couple of songs I wrote that put beers on the table every time I play them
only I didn't write them, they were gifts
they came to me fully written

some of them made it into a full length feature movie
Molson's gave us 2 hundred cases of beer...

serious **** I tells you

reply to post by Harte

Obviously, you can't provide a source because limestone has no such special acoustic properties.

wow BACK THAT UP PLEASE!!!
this i gotta see!!!

I'll forgive your ignorance not everyone has a good set of ears that they get paid to use

I explained why Limestone has its own virtues regarding sound in carved spaces
and at 196,000 samples per sec I ain't screwing around

Danbones
I have a couple of songs I wrote that put beers on the table every time I play them
only I didn't write them, they were gifts
they came to me fully written

Hey, awesome. That must be some gifted "mood" music,
you composed, would love to hear it!

reply to post by burntheships


haha
I m a little more redneck then normal when it comes to beers and guitars
one of the songs is called "UNPAID fines"
its a true story about how I cost the police chief his job
( no analyzable substance found)
another is called 38:55 (Marlin pat 1893 )
its about what happens when you try to take a veteran's house away...
and the cops missed the antique on the wall
another is called "incident at river bridge road "
About a trucker who drives off the bridge rather then smash into a family car

personally i like playing in wood rooms or concrete block basements ( similar to limestone )full of people
the sound is so nice sometimes

I have to make some new recordings for a recording grant application
I'll send you links when they are upped

reply to post by burntheships


amazing stuff, what a mysterious world we live in, imagine what it was like when everything was a great mystery.

reply to post by Danbones


Check this out, a fantastic research paper on the acoustic properties
of limestone.

research gate
(Its a bit tricky to access, I did not register just clicked around it back and forth)

Also found a fantastic read from Princeton concerning ancient sites,
and the repeated findings of ancient structures seemingly designed
for desired clarity of resonance with the human voice at 110 hz.

www.princeton.edu...
Truly fantastic stuff in that one.

Another example -

The prosperity brought by the Asklepieion enabled Epidaurus to construct civic monuments too: the huge theatre that delighted Pausanias for its symmetry and beauty, which is used once again for dramatic performances, the ceremonial Hestiatoreion (banqueting hall), baths and a palaistra. The theater was designed by Polykleitos the Younger in the 4th century BC. The original 34 rows were extended in Roman times by another 21 rows. As is usual for Greek theatres (and as opposed to Roman ones), the view on a lush landscape behind the skênê is an integral part of the theatre itself and is not to be obscured. It seats up to 15,000 people.

The theatre is marveled for its exceptional acoustics, which permit perfect intelligibility of unamplified spoken word from the proskenion or skênê to all 15,000 spectators, regardless of their seating (see Ref., in Greek). Famously, tour guides have their groups scattered in the stands and show them how they can easily hear the sound of a match struck at center-stage. A 2007 study by Nico F. Declercq and Cindy Dekeyser of the Georgia Institute of Technology indicates that the astonishing acoustic properties may be the result of the advanced design: The rows of limestone seats filter out low-frequency sounds, such as the murmur of the crowd, and amplify high-frequency sounds from the stage. [3]
en.wikipedia.org...

edit on 23-2-2014 by burntheships because: (no reason given)

It will be very interesting to learn of the findings by the research team.

International team of scientists to study hypogeum acoustics

The acoustic properties within the Hypogeum have already been studied extensively. It was found by Maltese composer Ruben Zahra and a research team from Italy that sound resonates at 110 Hz within the Oracle chamber, and this matches the same or similar frequency that has been found in many other ancient chambers around the world, including Newgrange in Ireland.

According to Dr Robert Jahn from Princeton University, it may be the dimensions of the room or the quality of the stone that determines the exact pitch of this echo behaviour. :

reply to post by Danbones


Oh, look here another one!


Mystery of Greek Amphitheater's Amazing Sound Finally Solved

Now, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered that the limestone material of the seats provide a filtering effect, suppressing low frequencies of voices, thus minimizing background crowd noise. Further, the rows of limestone seats reflect high-frequencies back towards the audience, enhancing the effect.

Researcher Nico Declercq, a mechanical engineer, initially suspected that the slope of the theater had something to do with the effect.

"When I first tackled this problem, I thought that the effect of the splendid acoustics was due to surface waves climbing the theater with almost no damping," Declercq said. "While the voices of the performers were being carried, I didn't anticipate that the low frequencies of speech were alsofiltered out to some extent."

However, experiments with ultrasonic waves and numerical models indicated that frequencies up to 500 hertz (cycles per second) were lowered, and frequencies higher than 500 hertz went undiminished, he said.

Archaeoacoustics: The Sound of Ancient Megalithic Structures

Sound scientist, Prof. Daniel Talma of the University of Malta explains: “At certain frequencies you have standing waves that emphasize each and other waves that de-emphasize each other. The idea that it was used thousands of years ago to create a certain trance – that’s what fascinates me.”

Ireland: Newgrange
Newgrange: Primary Resonance 110 Hz

Previous archaeoacoustic investigations by Robert Jahn have examined the acoustic properties of a sample of chambered prehistoric (primarily Neolithic) megalithic structures in England and Ireland, including the major passage of Newgrange, Ireland (constructed c.3200 BC). These structures were found to exhibit a common acoustic property: all were characterized by primary resonance frequencies in the 95–120 Hz range, with most at 110–112 Hz.

Notably, the central chamber of Newgrange, the largest and most architecturally sophisticated of the sites tested in that work, displayed a primary resonance frequency of 110 Hz. In some cases, fairly massive stones had been placed at particular locations within the chambers apparently to adjust their physical properties and yield these resonant properties. One suggestion has been that cavity resonance may have been designed to support human ritual chanting, because the resonance frequency lies within the human vocal range.
thearrowsoftruth.com...

edit on 23-2-2014 by burntheships because: (no reason given)

when i am doing live sound I balance the rig with a 31 band eq
every room is different just as the limestone reacts a certain way temperature changes things, the season ..winter coats...
booze and drugs change hearing via blood flow

A consortium called The PEAR Proposition: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research are pioneers in the field of archaeo-acoustics, merging archaeology and sound science. Directed by Physicist Dr. Robert Jahn, the PEAR group set out in 1994 to test acoustic behavior in megalithic sites such as Newgrange and Wayland's Smithy in the UK. They found that the ancient chambers all sustained a strong resonance at a sound frequency between 95 and 120 hertz: well within the range of a low male voice.



In subsequent OTSF testing, stone rooms in ancient temples in Malta were found to match the same pattern of resonance, registering at the frequency of 110 or 111 hz. This turns out to be a significant level [right] for the human brain. Whether it was deliberate or not, the people who spent time in such an environment were exposing themselves to vibrations that impacted their minds.

Sound scientist, Prof. Daniel Talma of the University of Malta explains: "At certain frequencies you have standing waves that emphasize each and other waves that de-emphasize each other. The idea that it was used thousands of years ago to create a certain trance -- that’s what fascinates me."

Dr. Ian A. Cook of UCLA and colleagues published findings in 2008 of an experiment in which regional brain activity in a number of healthy volunteers was monitored by EEG through different resonance frequencies.

Findings indicated that at 110 hz the patterns of activity over the prefrontal cortex abruptly shifted, resulting in a relative deactivation of the language center and a temporary switching from left to right-sided dominance related to emotional processing. People regularly exposed to resonant sound in the frequency of 110 or 111 hz would have been "turning on" an area of the brain that bio-behavioral scientists believe relates to mood, empathy and social behavior.

www.viewzone.com...

the medium is the message
the area the chanting is in becomes part of the instrument just like a guitar body or a tuba.
now depending where you are and what echoes and frequencies are bouncing around


This is what I was getting at with mention of the EVP software I mentioned earlier in the disjointed randomized sounds coming to the ear the brain will precieve the answer of the oracle
by choosing the music or chant asciated to a particular diety then listening in a certain spot...one could precieve it as communication with the diety...

like playing black sabbath backwards in hopes of hearing the devil talking

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Thanks Storm,

We know so much now, yet so little,
comparatively in many areas.

Danbones
when i am doing live sound I balance the rig with a 31 band eq
every room is different just as the limestone reacts a certain way temperature changes things

Yes indeed.

The limestone the Maltese used for this structure was upper-coralline,
I cant help but wonder about the acoustic properties that may have
been enhanced by the seashells.

Malta’s geological structure permitted the use of two types of limestone for construction purposes: (1) thehard, grey, upper-coralline limestone; and (2) the soft, pale, globigerina limestone. By exploiting naturalfissures and crevices in the rock, the early Maltese builders managed to break off megaliths using primitivetools. These included hand-axes fashioned from imported flint, knives chiselled from imported obsidian,wooden wedges and levers, stone wedges and hammers. The soft globigerina limestone was adopted forthe more
refined, masonry work

School net.gov

www.emwis-mt.org...

The oldest layer, the lower coralline limestone, is made up mainly of reef-forming organisms such as calcareous algae and coral, where one is more likely to find bivalve seashells. At the very top of the lower coralline limestone layer is a shallow but very concentrated layer of large flat sea urchins.www.timesofmalta.com...

There are getto blaster stereos that have a sea shell shaped wave guide
around the speakers which are ment to amplify the frequencies around 90 to 120 Hz
it takes time for one side of the sound wave which would cancell out the other half if they met because one will be positive and one side will be negative.

The sea shell shaped surround delays the negative half of the sound wave so that it is in phase with the other half
peak added to peak and valley added to valley
most of the sub woofers ( below 120 hz ) I use operate in a similar fashion

a much better sound in the low range

reply to post by Danbones


Yes, Fibonacci sequence, The Golden Mean and Phi !

Being your a musician, I think you will dig this article.

The Fibonacci series of tuning forks create a perfect sonic spiral like the picture of a seashell. Dr. John Beaulieu created the tuning forks based on the ratios of the Fibonacci sequence. The first four tuning forks come from Pythagorean intervals (Solar Harmonic Tuning Forks) and represent the ratios as well as notes, but the other four are microtonal and just expressed as ratios. Just like a visual spiral gets smaller and smaller, the sounds of each fork played in succession get closer and closer together. I think of the ratios as microtones between G and A with the entry point being the perfect fifth.www.askaudiomag.com...

Cant help but wonder about those fantastic acoustical properties
that may be correlated to that specific limestone, and the design of the temple.

Hey, this has been a fantastic science class, thanks!

Danbones
Hi BTS
Sound waves spinning around the head cause brainwave entrainment, at aprox 3 to 12 cycles per second...
facilitating a relaxed suggestible state...this is built into many a mathmatical temple and cathedral....
its pythagorean math but that is the explanation for something in use already...

I used to have a program that would slice up a recorded conversation into single words and then randomize them and it would then spit out the remixed audio
in the random sounds phrases would appear which related to the question being asked
these would be like random echoes coming from all those surfaces and you would hear your answer in them

the program's name had something to do with the term EVP, and is related to the term reverse speach which also produces telling phrases...

edit on 22-2-2014 by Danbones because: (no reason given)

Wow! I did that with the transcripts of political speeches made by British political leaders. Downloaded them all, extracted all the individual words and sorted them alphabetically and removed duplicates. It was amazing the things that came up.

that would be an interesting thread...
mmmmuuuuhaha
I am facinated by the kind of stuff that comes out of things like that
I am going to guess and say that would be a similar oracle to the OP
if you wrote the words and picked them out of a hat
if you recorded the speech and made a region of each word and randomized them for playback...

then there is also anagrams too
Jesus Christ = Rich Jest US....maybe thats us as in U.S.


or Danbones- S.O. banned

reply to post by burntheships

thanks for the link BTS looks like an interesting site for me
the nautilus is the same as a tuba
in order to keep air pressure up you have to expand the tube in a fabonicci sequence
hense the flair of a horn...or the opposite way as an ear funnel hearing aid

what i did was I made white noise files and put fabonicci numbered frequencies on them for brainwave entrainment
2 3 5 8 13 21...
I wish I could somehow test the results scientifically instead of just by the feel