Hearing Ancient Sounds?

It turns out that it may be possible to "hear" some sounds that were inadvertently recorded before recording devices were invented. acoustic vibrations may have been trapped on surfaces such as pottery and paintings while they were being created. In a paper written in 2000, Christer Hamp describes experiments in which researchers have been able to extract sounds from these unusual media. In two sets of experiments done over a forty year time span, a couple of researchers have reported that, for example, if an artist speaks the word "blue" while making his brush strokes, it may be possible by drawing a sensitive stylus over the canvas to recover that sound from striations in the canvas. Similarly, by passing a stylus over a recently made clay pot, the researchers were able to extract the 60 Hz hum of the motor that was driving the pottery wheel.

Nobody has actually extracted any "ancient" sounds yet, but the prospect is ingtriguing and seems scientifically sound.