History leaves a treasure trove of clues, from crumbling ruins to fossilized bones, yet the sounds that once filled ancient skies remain stubbornly silent. Through cutting‑edge scans, anatomical modeling, and the magic of 3D printing, scientists and sound designers have coaxed long‑lost voices—from extinct birds to prehistoric beasts—back into the modern ear. These 8 incredible resurrected ancient sounds prove the past can still sing.
8 Incredible Resurrected Ancient Sounds
8 A Pile Of Extinct Birds
Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum, unveiled the Te Taiao exhibition in May 2019, showcasing a collection of extinct native birds such as the formidable Haast’s eagle and its equally massive prey, the moa. The exhibition also features newly‑crafted vocalizations of these long‑gone avians, painstakingly assembled by museum staff and Wellington‑based sound designers.
Sound engineer Piers Gilbertson first borrowed the call of a golden eagle, then altered its pitch to approximate the Haast’s eagle. He admits the result initially resembled “a large, angry chicken.” Turning to a Wahlberg’s eagle, Gilbertson and fellow designer Chris Ward slowed the length of the call while preserving its frequency range, producing a more convincing reconstruction.
The recreated Haast’s eagle screech can be heard above. By clicking the bracketed link at the end of this sentence you can also listen to re‑creations of the moa, Finsch’s duck, the New Zealand goose, and the huia.
7 Panpipes From Roman Egypt
Listen to it here
In March 2018 researchers at the University of Kent successfully 3D‑printed a working replica of a set of panpipes that once belonged to Roman Egypt. The fragile original reed panpipes were first scanned, alongside several other ancient instruments, as part of a collaborative effort aimed at exhibiting the recreated sounds at University College London’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.
Because suitable reeds of the required size were essentially unavailable, the team experimented with alternative materials. A bamboo prototype was produced, but the ultimate success came from a biodegradable thermoplastic. When tested, the 3D‑printed panpipes reproduced a musical scale documented in Roman‑Egyptian texts.
Project member Dr Ellen Swift described the breakthrough as a “real eureka moment,” noting surprise at how high‑pitched the instrument sounded.
6 Ancient Greek Music
Music in ancient Greece was abundant in the archaeological record, yet recreating its actual sound has proved elusive. While we possess extensive documentation of instruments, notation, and scales, the descriptions of how the music sounded differ greatly from modern Western expectations, often yielding odd‑sounding reconstructions.
Dr Armand D’Angour of Oxford tackled this mystery by analyzing a papyrus discovered in 1892 that contains a fragment of a chorus from Euripides’
After three years of work, D’Angour reconstructed the music in 2016. Re‑creating well‑preserved examples of the aulos—a common wind instrument of the era—helped determine the pitch range. In 2017 the piece was performed by an aulos player accompanied by a choir, finally giving listeners a glimpse of ancient Greek sound.
5 Nesyamun
In January 2020 scientists managed to give voice to a 3,000‑year‑old Egyptian priest named Nesyamun. The mummy’s vocal tract was remarkably intact, fitting for a man whose coffin bears the inscription “Nesyamun, true of voice.” Researchers CT‑scanned the throat and 3D‑printed a replica of the vocal tract, which was then attached to a speaker and driven by a computer to generate sound.
The resulting output was a realistic‑sounding “eeeeehhh” tone, which speech scientist Dr David Howard described as convincingly human. Recreating full words remains challenging because the tongue has not survived as well as the throat, and more detailed knowledge of the priest’s articulatory movements and the phonetics of his language would be required. Nevertheless, Howard believes future advances could allow us to hear entire sentences spoken in Nesyamun’s voice.
4 The Acoustics Of Stonehenge
Listen to it here
What did Stonehenge sound like around 2200 BC? Dr Trevor Cox of the University of Salford, an enthusiast of acoustic archaeology, reconstructed the ancient acoustic environment by creating a 1:12‑scale 3D‑printed model of the monument as it stood with all stones intact. The miniature was placed in an acoustic research chamber and subjected to sounds played twelve times faster than normal, mimicking the original frequencies.
Cox discovered that, despite being an open‑air structure, the fully‑erected Stonehenge behaved acoustically like an enclosed hall. Sound would bounce repeatedly off the stones, amplifying voices within and producing a powerful, reverberant effect that would have impressed Neolithic listeners.
The next phase of research will explore how the acoustics evolved as stones were moved or fell over throughout the monument’s long history.
3 The Iceman
Ötzi, the famed “Iceman” discovered in South Tyrol in 1991, had his voice resurrected in 2016. Rolando Füstös of the Bolzano General Hospital CT‑scanned the mummy’s throat, opting for CT over MRI to avoid moving the delicate remains. Virtual software allowed the team to reconstruct the hyoid bone and compensate for an arm covering the throat.
Because soft tissue preservation was incomplete and the tension of Ötzi’s vocal cords unknown, the scientists relied on mathematical models and software simulations to estimate his vocal output. The generated vowel sounds fell between 100 and 150 Hz—typical for a human male—but possessed a surprisingly gravelly timbre. The language Ötzi spoke remains a mystery.
2 Woolly Mammoth Vocalization
Listen to it here (three minutes into the clip on the linked page)
In 2010, Marguerite Humeau discovered a sophisticated robotic mouth designed by Hideyuki Sawada, featuring moving lips, a flexible windpipe, and “lungs” formed by an air tank. After the device went viral for singing a lullaby, Humeau envisioned applying the technology to extinct creatures.
Her first project tackled Lucy, the famous Australopithecus afarensis. With limited skeletal material, Humeau consulted paleontologists, an ENT specialist, and a surgeon experienced in larynx transplants to construct a voice box from resin, rubber, and silicone that approximated Lucy’s vocal tract.
Inspired by the success with Lucy, Humeau turned to the woolly mammoth, collaborating with elephant vocalization experts and Bernard Buigues, who had worked with preserved mammoth specimens. She built a 20‑foot (6 m) apparatus that emulated the massive animal’s vocal system. The low, rumbling sound displayed at the Royal College of Art in London in 2011 reportedly frightened several children.
1 The T‑Rex’s Rumble
Popular culture portrays the Tyrannosaurus rex with a thunderous, cinematic roar, but scientists suspect the real sound was quite different. In 2017, BBC documentary maker Chris Packham enlisted Dr Julia Clarke, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Texas, to investigate.
Clarke examined the fossilized braincase of a T‑rex to infer its hearing capabilities, discovering sensitivity to very low frequencies—potentially below the range of human hearing. She then used calls from Chinese crocodiles and the Eurasian bittern, scaling them up to the size of a T‑rex, to model what the dinosaur might have produced.
The final audio, heard around the 2:30 mark of the documentary, is a deep, resonant rumble that would likely be felt as much as heard. According to Clarke, “the sound just induces fear… it may trigger an ancient adaptive response to low‑frequency vibrations.”