Aztec death whistles have a unique instrumental construction To understand the physical mechanisms behind the whistle's shrill and screeching sound, a team of researchers at the University of ...

Archaeologists have discovered numerous ceramic or clay whistles at Aztec sites, dubbed "death whistles" because of their distinctive skull shapes. A new paper published in the journal ...

Brain scans of modern listeners suggest that Aztec whistles sound like human screams, which may have prepared sacrifice victims for their journey to the underworld. Ritual Aztec whistles produced ...

But in the forests of central Mexico, a single note from an Aztec whistle didn’t always indicate celebration — it meant death. “Death whistles,” or Aztec skull whistles, were short ...