[card_zero]

Huh, but that's totally a tin can telephone. Would be a fun project for an experimental archeologist. The cans - I mean gourds - have little drumskin membranes stretched over them! The twine looks like the only dubious part, too stretchy maybe. Not sure what qualities an acoustic transmission line should have.

[WalterBright]

Make one out of gourds and see if it works.

If you have to yell in it, though, the other end can hear you 75 feet away just fine without it!

[OJFord]

Why would it not? The string/twine is more the key to it really, are you thinking the gourd would be too dampening? They do say it's resin-coated.

I'm not saying I buy that that's what this was made for or how it was used, but I do reckon you can make a functional 'telephone' of this style with gourds.

[WalterBright]

Try it and see.

I seriously doubt twine would be a good carrier of vibrations over 75 feet. The fibers would dampen it out. Then there's the mass of the gourds, I doubt the faint vibrations left would vibrate them to a point you could hear anything.

I also suspect that the reason nobody tries it is because then the theory that it is a Fred Flintstone telephone falls apart.

[OJFord]

The onus isn't really on me, it's not my device, I'm not even the organisation/article author claiming it is functional. You claim it can't work, have you tried it and seen? (Although admittedly you can't really show by practical experiment that it can't possibly be done.)

I do think it's more likely it was for use as a rope, with gourd weights to ease throwing.

[WalterBright]

The burden of proof should be on the people writing academic papers asserting it is a telephone.

Just like if someone claims they found a way to use water as an automobile fuel. I don't need to prove it doesn't work. They need to prove it does.