CAMBRIDGE, MA – A groundbreaking project at MIT, utilizing cutting-edge CT scanning and material science to perfectly replicate historical musical instruments, has yielded a surprising, yet ultimately unsurprising, conclusion: most ancient music was, at best, mildly pleasant background noise.

After successfully reconstructing a 3,000-year-old Sumerian lyre and a Roman tuba with unparalleled accuracy, researchers spent months analyzing their sonic output. “We poured millions into this, thinking we’d unlock some lost, transcendent auditory experience,” stated Dr. Evelyn Reed, lead ethnomusicologist, adjusting her spectacles. “Turns out, a lot of it sounds like a slightly out-of-tune kazoo convention, or a particularly aggressive humming session.”

The team, a collaboration between the Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology and the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, had hoped to uncover profound cultural insights or forgotten melodies that would redefine human musical history. Instead, they mostly found repetitive scales and what Dr. Reed described as “the ancient equivalent of elevator music, but with more goat entrails.”

“It’s a triumph of engineering, absolutely,” added Benjamin Sabatini, the senior postdoc who initiated the project. “We can now perfectly reproduce the sound of a Bronze Age flute, and that sound is… fine. It’s just fine.” The team is now considering pivoting to replicating ancient alarm clocks, hoping for a more impactful discovery.