The Echoing Chamber of Newgrange
Deep inside a 5,000-year-old Irish passage tomb, a low voice or drum seems to fill the whole stone chamber.
What was reported
Newgrange is a great circular mound in Ireland's Boyne Valley, built about 5,200 years ago, older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza. A long stone passage leads to a cross-shaped chamber, which is lit by the rising sun on the mornings around the winter solstice.
In the 1990s, acoustics researchers tested the chamber and found that it resonates strongly at low frequencies, in the range of a deep male voice or a drum, so that such sounds seem to swell and surround the listener.
Explanations offered
Similar resonances have been measured in other ancient chambers, such as the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum in Malta. Whether the builders designed them for sound, or whether the effect simply comes from the size and shape of a stone room, is debated by archaeologists.
- When
- Built about 5,200 years ago
- Where
- Newgrange, Boyne Valley, County Meath, Ireland
- Witnesses
- Archaeologists and acoustics researchers
- Status
- Partly explained
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