14 DAY TRIAL // The Chavín culture, and arguably other cultures that lived in the Peruvian Andes some 3,000 years ago, may have had advanced sound architecture knowledge millennia ago. The design of their resonant conch shell trumpets should make any concert hall engineer today envious.
The village of Chavín de Huantar was a gathering place for ancient people. It sported an intricate layout, with multilayer mazes, staircases, squares, terraces, temples and megaliths dotting the place. Most of the walls were decorated with amazing bas-reliefs.
On the floors of the largest temple, archaeologists discovered fossilized conch shells embedded in stone, which were most likely used for religious ceremonies. See here for a sample of how they sounded like. “It’s not very imposing over loudspeakers. But in person it rattles your bones,” says Miriam Kolar.
The Stanford University archaeoacoustics researcher was involved in studies at Chavin de Huantar. Now listen to those shells go, I've had them on repeat for hours, and they can blow your mind away.