In 1999 during an excavation of an Aztec temple at the Tlatelolco site, in Mexico City archaeologists uncovered the remains of a 20-year-old sacrificial victim clutching various musical instruments, among them a small ceramic skull-shaped whistle.
The skull-shaped body of the Aztec death whistle may represent Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec Lord of the Underworld. (Image credit: Sascha Frühholz, UZH).
The Aztec Death Whistle as it came to be known has a skull-shaped body which may represent Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec Lord of the Underworld. When blown through the whistle makes a screaming sound.
A team of researchers at the University of Zurich led by Sascha Frühholz, Professor of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, created 3D digital reconstructions of original Aztec death whistles from the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.
The models revealed a unique internal construction of two opposing sound chambers that create physical air turbulence as the source of the screeching sound.
Professor Frühholz explained:
“The whistles have a very unique construction, and we don’t know of any comparable musical instrument from other pre-Columbian cultures or from other historical and contemporary contexts.”
The research team obtained sound recordings of original Aztec death whistles as well as from handmade replicas. Listeners rated these sounds as extremely chilling and frightening. The Aztec death whistle sounds were also played to people while their brains were being recorded. Brain regions belonging to the affective neural system responded strongly to the sound, again confirming its daunting nature. But the team also observed brain activity in regions that associate sounds with symbolic meaning. This suggests, say the researchers, a “hybrid” nature of these death whistle sounds, combining a basic psychoaffective influence on listeners with more elaborate mental processes of sound symbolism, signifying the iconographic nature.
The researchers suggest that Aztec communities may have specifically capitalized on the frightening and symbolic nature of the death whistle sound to influence the audience in their ritual procedures.
Click on this link to access, Psychoacoustic and archeoacoustic nature of ancient Aztec skull whistles, published in Communications Psychology
The Aztec Death Whistle was referenced in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), as an item that was in the collection of Egon Spengler. The stylized prop itself was constructed by MythBusters hosts Adam Savage and Allie Weber.
There are several theories as to how the whistle was used, including in warfare, or to summon the wind, which some listeners think it mimics the sound of.
And what does it sound like?
