We know that between 5,000 and 4,400 years ago Stonehenge was used as a cemetery. But what about what happened there before that? Well ceremonies were held and people gathered. And now there is scientific evidence that whatever they did inside the monument would have had great acoustics.
The acoustics not only would have been amplified by the structure but would have stayed inside. The stones and how they were placed would have helped to drown out the outside noise so that people could hear better what was going on inside. And the sound pollution to the outside would have been very minimal. This would have been a great place for a music festival but scientists believe that it was not ultimately designed for such purposes.
Because of how the stones were placed speech would have been contained inside the monument. Meaning that if they wanted to hold secret ceremonies they wouldn’t have had to worry about being overheard. How researchers found this out was by building a completed Stonehenge inside an acoustic room which was built to simulate an open space.
To explore Stonehenge’s sound dynamics, acoustical engineer Trevor Cox and colleagues used laser scans of the site and archaeological evidence to construct a physical model one-twelfth the size of the actual monument. That was the largest possible scale replica that could fit inside an acoustic chamber at the University of Salford in England, where Cox works. This room simulated the acoustic effects of the open landscape surrounding Stonehenge and compacted ground inside the monument.
ScienceNews.com
You can read about the entire process of finding all this out by reading the article here. There’s a lot that more techy people would be able to resonate with in the research article than I can. And to be honest, I just think it’s neat!
