DISQUS

Greg · 3 years ago

Um... Might want to hold off a little while before you forward this to your friends or co-workers. I can't find the URL now, but I saw a site earlier today that found that this was someone's April Fools' joke from last year. Maybe someone else will post a followup here if they happen to have seen the same information. This would be amazing if it were true, but I don't think that's likely. Besides, if this recording were really from 3,000 BC or earlier, they wouldn't have been speaking Latin...

Bruce V. Bracken · 3 years ago

That's what I was thinking. It would be the ancestor of Latin, at least. Where did they find it?

Berty · 3 years ago

The recording you hear is from the second vase, which is 2000 years old and came from Pompei ... The first vase they speak of is from South America, where they did not speak latin 5000 years ago, nor 2000 year ago either. We don't hear the first vase recording (a shame) ...
I don't know how old is that news but i heard from it a few year ago...

Berty · 3 years ago

Ok ... on digg.com, there is something like 140 comments on this debating of the truth of this one, while the 20th comment post the URL (http://www.bilgesehir.com/c_filmo_principale/e_...) of the film author. As you can see on the title page, this film was an April fools joke on a belgium TV, dating from last year...

Ferdie · 3 years ago

If I'm not mistaken th eidea was taken from an episode of the X-Files

Nephster · 3 years ago

I heard something very similar to this as a (I think) BBC Radio 4 play broadcast in December 1996. The vase there had captured the voice of Christ who said he *wasn't* the Messiah on it! Great story, really well done, wish I knew who wrote it...

olivier tallendier · 3 years ago

So funny,
i'm french, the scientist sound serious,
but if you understand latin, you should listen something at the end of the movie.....

Anonymous · 3 years ago

Olivier, I speak neither French nor Latin. Let us in on the joke, please.

ppriede · 3 years ago

I see this in a CSI episode, i don't know much X.file (maybe also there)
If you can see this CSI episode...
CSI - Committed - Air date: April 28,2005
http://www.tv.com/csi/committed/episode/412257/...

Extract from
http://www.csifiles.com/reviews/csi/committed.s...
"Sophia Curtis places Adam's pot on a turntable in the CSI lab and uses a laser to pick up some sound that was recorded in the grooves"

I 'am a Sound and Acoustic Engineer, and in my professional opinion this is not true
Why?
If you listen to the first recordings made in modern times, they sound very bad, and they have a big horn to move a little niddle to record.

If some object can touch the surface of the pottery, must be in a very precise distance
If you add that the sound in the area must be VERY VERY loud to move the object...
Also add the noise by the rotation of the base ...
And also de "noise" of the irregular pottery...
- Low frequency (by the rotation): VERY Loud
- Low frequency (by the rotation): Loud
- Mid-High frequency (by the speaker): Loud (but not much)

If yout think a speaker can be louder than the rotation ... maybe, but to a distance, no just millimeters from the pottery...
And always, the loud frequency is easyer to record, because have more power than the high.

And Also, some words are "too clear", even in early recording they have several problems with the recording of high frequency.

When I see this article i was shock. But after a little thinking... may be just a joke.


(Sorry for my bad english, but i from Chile, so I speak spanish)

Michael · 3 years ago

Several years ago someone did this with an ancient pot, and released a recording of the motion of the potters wheel, which I think is a lot more convincing concept. That one was supposedly not a joke, and basically it sounded about like you'd think--a rhythmic rushing sound. Perhaps this one, which does sound like a joke, draws on that concept.

Nicolas · 3 years ago

seen this before on CSI

Nicolas · 3 years ago

seen this before on CSI.

jim · 3 years ago

You people need to try reading instead of watching television. This idea first came forward at least 20 years ago in a science fiction story. Can't remember the title or author but it was exactly the same scenario. So X-files and CSI stole the idea. The story stuck with me and I've been waiting for the day it actually happens. This may well be a hoax but it may well happen at some point. Technology marches on.
Jim
Jim

phil · 3 years ago

you can tell by the production values that it's totally fake

i.e. the framing of the guy they're interviewing... half his head is out of the shot.

Mark · 3 years ago

X-Files, the "Lazarus Bowl", a religious artifact that was a pot being thrown by Lazurus' mother as Jesus commanded him to rise from the dead. When decoded and translated from the original Aramaic it said, "I am the egg man, I am the egg man, I am the walrus" and although the translator had problems he thought the next line was "koo-koo-ka-choo"

It was probably a fake

Scott Stevenson · 3 years ago

Uh, not sure who was the translator on this but the video says "cinq si?cles" which is five centuris (500 years)... not 5000.

-Scott

Adam York · 3 years ago

Ancient Sounds Indeed--We Get Hoaxed!
24-Feb-2006

We could not resist the idea that ancient sounds had been recovered from pottery grooves. The idea was so fascinating that we didn't stop to read the website involved carefully enough. It's actually a brilliant hoax posted last April 1. This is especially ironic, because we have a notoriously bad habit of posting hoax stories on April 1 ourselves. So kudos to those of you who wrote saying this could not possibly be real, and thanks to the alert reader who pointed out to us that the site is featured in the web's wonderful Museum of Hoaxes.

Rod · 3 years ago

OMNI magazine had a an article on this acoustic archaelogy back in the eighties.

Hellen Back · 3 years ago

i developed a defragmenter for pottery noise. It works great. We danceto the static sometimes

stink butthole · 3 years ago

I peed in a pot once

George Bush · 3 years ago

By cracky how the heck can this be?

Mikey · 3 years ago

Come on. Doesn't anybody READ anymore? Try the book by the name "The HAB Theory".

Toph · 3 years ago

This is actually a proven method of recording voices, scientists at the SD Institute of Archaeology MADE a working replica of this and placed it on display, it sounds eerily life-like...

George Wagner · 3 years ago

While I believe that some ancient sounds will eventually be recovered in this or some similar manner (the field is known as Archaeoacoustics), this story is not proof.

For a simple reason - there was no Latin language in 3,000 BC.

Also, when such sounds are eventually recovered they are most likely going to be in one- or two-second fragments, tops, not extended speech.

sen oreilly · 3 years ago

This may be a hoax but the operative concept behind it can't be too far from the truth. There was a science fiction story from many years back that featured a way of recovering sounds from objects based on molecular imprintation. I suspect that sooner or later we will be able to pick up sound patterns from solid objects much in the same way that the intelligence agencies can pick up converstations from the vibrations of glass window panes. Imagine the possibilities: being able to listen to the original words of Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha and others. History may be rewritten in many strange ways in the near future.

Ledigtator · 3 years ago

I'm french and I can give you a reliable translation of the figures quoted in the movie:
-The first vase is said to be 500 years old ("5 siecles") and not 5000 as I have read in many comments.
-The second one is said to be 2000 years.

Therefore, figures presented here match with History (cf Latin Language). What I am much more skeptical about is the reliability of this so-called scientist. It sounds like a big joke to me.

Majmac · 3 years ago

People will believe what they want to believe, no matter if there is nothing to backit up! E.G. U.F.O.s & mermaids

Ima pahlsey · 3 years ago

I missed my bus today and a car splashed me on purpose.

gabi · 2 years ago

"People will believe what they want to believe, no matter if there is nothing to backit up! E.G. U.F.O.s & mermaids "

I believe in all of the above :)

Debbie · 2 years ago

NOT FAKE! Saw this for the first time when it was displayed at the Reuben H. Fleet Science center in San Diego. It is a hands on Science museum and they had a laser wand and speakers set up so visitors could "play" the clay pot. Very cool, very real - Very wild! Believe it...! Granted, it didn't have digital clarity, but you could hear laughing and talking.

Now, I haven't seen the video posted on this site, though... maybe THAT is fake...