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Researchers make noises of pre-Columbian society
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-06-30 15:02 Velazquez meticulously researches each noisemaker before replicating it. He travels across Mexico to examine newly unearthed wind instruments, some dating back to 400 B.C. and shaped like animals or deities. He studies reliefs and scans 500-year-old Spanish chronicles. But making replicas is only part of the work. Then he has to figure out how to play them. He'll blow into some holes and plug others, or press the instrument to his lips and flutter his tongue. Sometimes he puts the noisemaker inside his mouth and blows, fluctuating the air from his lungs. He experimented with one frog-shaped whistle for a year before discovering its inner croak. Renowned archaeologist Paul Healy, who made an important discovery of Mayan instruments in Belize in the 1980s, said many of the originals still work. "A couple of these instruments we found were broken, which was great because we could actually see the construction of them, the actual technology of building a sound chamber out of paper-thin clay," he said. Still, their exact sounds will likely remain a mystery. "When you blow into them, you still can get notes from them, so you could figure out what the range was," Healy said. "But what we don't have is sheet music to give us a more accurate picture of what it sounded like." |
