Archaeoacoustics is a young science, and many of its questions remain without definitive answers.
Current research does not claim that ancient people chose sacred sites solely for their acoustic properties or that music was born this way. However, it shows that the sound environment was a much more significant part of human life than was assumed just a few decades ago.
Today, archaeologists, acousticians, physicists, and digital modeling specialists are, in effect, bringing another dimension back into history – sound.
They help us hear what is impossible to see at archaeological excavations: how space reflected sound, how humans and their environment interacted, what the acoustic experience of our ancestors might have been like.
Perhaps this is why the origin of music is increasingly viewed not as a moment of sudden invention, but as a long process of understanding the world around us.
Humans didn't just create sounds. They learned to hear. They observed. They compared. They remembered.
And only after thousands of generations did they begin to respond to nature with their own melodies.
The history of music likely did not begin with the first instrument. Most probably, it began with the first attentive listener.
When Stone Begins to Respond
Research from the University of Helsinki has continued in new archaeoacoustic studies.
At the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) 2025 conference, researchers Jami Pekkanen and Riitta Rainio presented the results of a study on four Finnish tafonis – natural hollows in rocks formed by natural weathering.
Using specially developed equipment for measuring small spaces, the researchers discovered pronounced acoustic resonances in the range from 126 to 953 Hz – precisely in the range of the human voice.
Furthermore, in some tafonis, reverberation lasting up to 1.4 seconds was recorded, and under certain conditions, a stable sound background effect (drone) emerged, altering the perception of speech and singing.
To study these spaces as accurately as possible, one of the objects was additionally digitized using mobile LiDAR and aerial photography. The resulting 3D model allows not only for acoustic analysis using computer methods but also for its reproduction in a virtual environment, its use in scientific experiments, musical projects, and museum exhibits.
The researchers' conclusion is particularly interesting.
They note that local legends associate tafonis with nature spirits, offering places, healing practices, and communication with beings beyond the human world. By correlating these accounts with acoustic measurements, the authors cautiously conclude: it is likely that people of past centuries noticed and utilized the unique sonic properties of these natural spaces.
Archaeoacoustics is just beginning to reveal the sonic world of the past to us.
Each new study allows for a more precise understanding of how ancient caves, rock sanctuaries, and natural spaces, which accompanied humans for millennia, sounded.
But perhaps the most interesting question of this science relates not only to the past.
If natural spaces indeed possessed such unusual acoustic properties, then another question arises.
Could such places have become a kind of "listening school," where humans first began to realize that space could not only receive sound but also respond to it?
Perhaps the history of music did not begin at the moment humans created the first instrument, but much earlier – when they first heard the surrounding world engaging in a peculiar sound dialogue with them.
