The blood-curdling scream of the Aztec Death Whistle is thought to have been a soundtrack to human sacrifices centuries ago, or may even have echoed through the landscape as the ancient empire took enemies on in battle.
A type of air-spring whistle, the striking objects emit a sound described as the scariest in the world, compared to “the scream of a thousand corpses”.
Those who hear it are shocked by its uncanny vocal quality, an otherworldly whirr that would no doubt have been chilling to hear in the 14th century.
But new research has found that the instrument’s power to inspire primal fear in those exposed to it hasn’t diminished in the five centuries since.
Researchers from the University of Zurich tested it out by playing the sound of the whistle to a group of European volunteers. These sounds included recordings of genuine Aztec death whistles, replicas, whistles the researchers created and other sounds.
The team also recorded the response of their brains to the “scream”, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), MailOnline reports.
Those who heard it reported feeling frightened, and their discomfort was reflected in brain scans that showed it put participants on on high alert, and fired up neural regions associated with core emotions like rage, fear, and even grief.
Speaking to the news outlet, the lead author of the study Professor Sascha Frühholz said: “The sound is rough and high-pitched, and as listeners, you usually do not like such sounds.”
Archaeologists believe they may have been used to scare the victims of human sacrifice and those watching on during the Ancient Aztecs’ infamous rituals.
It has been shown in previous studies that the whistles produce mutliple tones simultaneously as the air blown into it collides within its different chambers.
Asked for a description from volunteers, most compared it to a scream, though others also described it as being akin to artificial sounds like those created by kettles, chainsaws, machines or trains.
In their paper, published in Communications Psychology, the scientists reasoned that the uncanny mixture of natural and unnatural could be part of what makes the sound so unsettling.
The authors suggest the most likely explanation for the whistles’ use was in sacrificial ceremonies. “Given both the aversive/scary and associative/symbolic sound nature as well as currently known excavation locations at ritual burial sites with human sacrifices, usage in ritual contexts seems very likely, especially in sacrificial rites and ceremonies related to the dead,” they write.
“Skull whistles might have been used to scare the human sacrifice or the ceremonial audience, but further cross-documentation is needed here.”
Aztec Death Whistles, recreations of which are available online, have been discovered in the hands of victims of ritual sacrifice in temples including Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl temple, in Mexico City, which is thought to date back to the mid-14th century.
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