Ancient Maya Temples Were Giant Loudspeakers?

I'm liking all this acoustic archaeology lately..

Ancient Maya Temples Were Giant Loudspeakers?

[link to news.nationalgeographic.com]

Centuries before the first speakers and subwoofers, ancient Americans—intentionally or not—may have been turning buildings into giant sound amplifiers and distorters to enthrall or disorient audiences, archaeologists say.

Temples at the ancient Maya city of Palenque (map) in central Mexico, for example, might have formed a kind of "unplugged" public-address system, projecting sound across great distances, according to a team led by archaeologist Francisca Zalaquett of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. (See an interactive map of the Maya civilization.)

Zalaquett's team recently discovered that Palenque's Northern Group of public squares and temples—built around roughly A.D. 600—is especially good at projecting the human voice as well as sounds like those that would have been made by musical instruments found at the site.

The Maya built many types of musical instruments, including rattling gourds filled with seeds or stones, turtle shells played with deer antlers, as well as whistles, ocarinas, modified seashells, and other wind instruments, said Zalaquett, who presented the Palenque findings at a recent meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Cancún, Mexico. (More at link)