Could a 17,000-year-old Conch Shell Actually Be a Wind Instrument?

A conch shell unearthed in 1931 in a cave in the Pyrenees had carefully drilled holes that could produce music.

For over 80 years, the unearthed conch shell lay forgotten in the museum collection. Only now has it been discovered to be the oldest known wind instrument after researchers found that the shell had been modified by prehistoric owners to be played like a horn.

Mysterious Conch Shell

First unearthed in the Pyrenees in 131, in a richly decorated cave, the large shell was initially overlooked by archaeologists assuming that it was a long cup by Paleolithic people whose wall art adorns the space.

However, a recent re-examination of the conch during an inventory of items held at the Museum de Toulouse, Southern France reveals that the conch had in fact been carefully drilled and molded to hold what experts believe to be a mouthpiece.

Luckily, a skilled horn player that was enlisted by a team of multi-disciplinary French scientists was able to produce clear notes of C sharp, C, and D from the 17,000-year-old conch.

The insides of the conch discovered by the team also had decorations of red pigment marks in its inner whorl that bore striking resemblance to fingerprint artworks on the walls of the cave where it was discovered.

Gilles Tosello, archeologist and cave art specialist part of the investigating teams says, "We are supposing that the shell was decorated with the same pattern as was used in the cave art of Marsooulas, which establishes a strong link between the music played by the conch and the images on the walls."

He adds that, to their knowledge, this is the first time evidence of such a relationship between cave art and music in European prehistory was unearthed.

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The Music of the Conch

Various societies from Europe to Oceania, India to Japan are known to use conch shells as musical instruments, sacred objects, or calling devices. However, despite bone flutes being used roughly 35,000 years ago, Tosello explains that no other example of a conch instrument dates back to such an early period.

Carbon dating of the Marsoulas conch, named after the cave which was found near Toulouse established that it was roughly 17,000 years old from the time Magdalenian hunter-gatherers hunted deer and bison at the end of the last Ice Age.

The apex of the unearthed conch has been purposely hollowed, creating a round aperture through which narrow sticks were inserted to drill holes described by researchers as "a really complex technical operation". The outermost lip of the conch has been trimmed potentially allowing its player to insert their hand to modulate the sound.

The shell itself with lengths of 31cm belongs to the Atlantic mollusk species named Charonia lampas, although rare can be found in the Bay of Biscay.

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