Short Stuff: Aztec Death Whistle

In the late 90s, a strange musical instrument was excavated under the streets of CDMX. Listen in to learn all about the Aztec Death Whistle. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:07Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh, Chuck, Jerry in for Dave. This is short stuff. Stand back.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  That's right about the Aztec death whistle. We talked a lot about Mexico City, one of our favorite places to visit. And if you go to Mexico City, you should know that you are a lot of times standing on the ruins of ancient burial temples, Aztec temples. And they have excavated those over the years here and there. And in the late 90s, they excavated a temple dedicated to Aztec, to the Aztec wind god. And they uncovered the remains of a 20 year old male that was beheaded, squatting at the base of the stairway and holding a couple of musical instruments.

• 1:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, as an aside, I just wanted to say, I think I've said it before. The, the anthropological museum in Mexico City is world class.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's on my list. It'll, it'll happen next time for sure.

• 2:02Josh Clark?

  It's great for that very reason, because there's so many ruins just built right over and preserved in that way. I mean, think about it. Mexico City is one of the most densely populated cities on the planet and people were walking over a beheaded skeleton every day until the late 90s, when they excavated it, you know?

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19Josh Clark?

  So yeah, you said that, boy, did you say he was holding whistles or did you just say he was holding something?

• 2:24Speaker 02

  I said musical instruments, but you, yeah, there you go. They're whistles.

• 2:27Josh Clark?

  Whistles. I mean, you could have guessed that from the title, right?

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 2:31Josh Clark?

  But these whistles are special whistles. First of all, they're kind of tiny, but if you look closely, they had a skull engraved on them. And what they think this whole thing represents is the kind of union or combination between Ehikatl and Miklantikulti. These are two gods. Miklantikulti is the Aztec god of the underworld and death. Ehikatl is the Aztec wind god. And you put them together, you got two very powerful gods. And they think that's what these death whistles that the guy was holding symbolized.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Nice job on those pronunciations.

• 3:06Josh Clark?

  I really looked it up.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08Josh Clark?

  And dude, you should see how many mispronounced

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:12Josh Clark?

  words there are that they just sound so confident. There's one.

• 3:18Josh Clark?

  There's a festival called Toxkatl, Toxkatl? T-O-X-C-A-T-L. You have no idea how many like, how's it pronounced videos say Toxkatl? It's not Toxkatl.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty disappointing, the amount of wrong stuff out there.

• 3:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And if you're not sure how to pronounce something, don't make a video telling other people how to pronounce something.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, we mispronounce stuff on this show, worldwide show, but we don't tell people we're pronouncing it right.

• 3:50Josh Clark?

  Exactly. This isn't like how pronunciation works. Come on.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  So this is the Aztec death whistle, those two whistles this guy had. If you do a little research, you're probably going to see stuff about how they were used to terrify enemies in battle, like they all played them at once. But what we think we've come down to, thanks to, you know, the study of a lot of people, but especially this one guy, Arnd Both, who is a music archaeologist, is that these things probably were a little more ceremonial.

• 4:19Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  And maybe used to help guide the spirit in the afterlife. So this dude, I don't know if he's a doctor or not, but Both is his name, like I said. It's very cool. He's examines ancient musical instruments and artifacts, tries to, in a lot of cases, rebuild them and take some good guesses on what they were used for.

• 4:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is, I'm sure, way harder than you would think.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  So these, um, those two, uh, death whistles were excavated in the late nineties. I think in the, just a couple of years later in the aughts. Um, but did you say booth?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  I said both.

• 4:58Josh Clark?

  Both. He was the first person to actually play them. These things that were hundreds and hundreds of years old that a skeleton had been holding for God knows how long. Well, hundreds of years. Um, and he, um, apparently didn't, he was like, these, they suck. These are terrible death whistles.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a little underwhelming. It didn't make, uh, the big frightening noise they might've expected. Uh, so he did CT scans on them, uh, rebuilt them larger, uh, like, you know, exact replicas. And he found that they were an air spring whistle. So, uh, the Mayans had come up with these in seven to 800 CE. And you blow air through this intake tube and it reacts with a spring of air inside this chamber and distorts the sound. Then you can cup your hand over the bottom, like a lot of wind instruments, uh, and change the tone and stuff. But it's, it's completely its own thing. Um, it's not like any Western, uh, any other Western wind instrument.

• 5:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they were only made in pre-Columbian America. That's, they are very specific. And spring in this case is not like a coiled spring. It's like a spring of water that you get delicious water from, right?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 6:08Josh Clark?

  So, um, like I said, there's a big, uh, oh, wait, we'll just take a break. How about that?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll be right back.

• 6:37Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on the truck from your local Toyota dealer.

• 6:46Speaker 02

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• 6:59Josh Clark?

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• 7:15Speaker 02

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• 7:37Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 7:40Josh Clark?

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• 8:49Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, so I said there's a big, strong connection, as I was saying before, before we broke, between the wind god, McLanty-Culty, and E. Caddo. And I wasn't lying. There's written proof that shows that I'm correct.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  That's right. It's written in a pre-Columbian document called the Codex Borgia. And it is a manuscript, it's illustrated and it shows, it's got a lot of stuff in there. It's got history, it's got like some of the things they were studying, like botany, the stars. And it's got a great, big, comprehensive list of their pantheon of gods.

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  And the top notch mushroom soup casserole recipe.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  It might, for all I know, I can't tell anymore.

• 9:34Josh Clark?

  So, um, uh, Mictlan, Tikulti, uh, and Ekkadal, I just like saying them now.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  I know.

• 9:42Josh Clark?

  Now that I can say them correctly.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:44Josh Clark?

  They're back to back, arms crossed, like local news anchors.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Did they invent that?

• 9:48Josh Clark?

  I think so.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 9:50Josh Clark?

  Um, both looking at the, at you, the viewer, almost with a sassy kind of look on their face.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 9:57Josh Clark?

  Uh, and they are guarding the underworld together. So these, these guys are definitely connected in the Aztec pantheon, which goes to support that that's what those death whistles are, are kind of symbolizing. Those, they're these two gods together that in one interpretation, at least you could say is, um, life and death, the god of life, the god of death.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  That's right. So I mentioned it may be used to kind of guide you through the spirit world. Uh, in that Aztec tradition, when someone dies, it's a pretty, pretty perilous route to get to the underworld.

• 10:31Josh Clark?

  It takes nine years.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, nine years. And there's all kinds of rituals that people, uh, in the living world do to like urge them on, to give them strength. Um, one example here, in this case, it's pretty appropriate, is, uh, the dead cross a large field, um, being whipped by a, a wind, like a really fierce wind.

• 10:50Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  And in that book, in the Codex Borja, those winds are represented by blades, by obsidian blades. And, uh, those were the blades that they used to make sacrifices. You go back to this temple site where they found these whistles. And not only did they have those whistles, but there was a ceramic bowl there as well that had obsidian blades next to the body of this guy.

• 11:11Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. And the little sign that said, take one, leave one.

• 11:16Josh Clark?

  So this, I mean, all of this together just basically shows this is what those death whistles almost certainly were. And the reason that we're, and not just us, but both in particular, Booth or both, the music archaeologist, is going to all this trouble is because we don't know exactly what these things were used for, how they were used, what they were meant to sound like, we just don't know. So you have to piece together all this disparate information to kind of come together. And what it ultimately is laying a pretty good case for is that these were ritual musical instruments used in a specific ritual, probably,

• 11:57Josh Clark?

  like you said, to help departed souls across that field, that one level of the underworld.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, the wind.

• 12:03Josh Clark?

  And then also in that festival I talked about, Toshkotl, to honor the god Tetsket Lapoka. That one is pronounced like it looks.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So in 1913, there was a folklorist named Louis Spence.

• 12:18Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Who wrote, I really nailed that one, who wrote, "Myths of Mexico and Peru," and he described this festival, and this is sort of the key part as far as we're concerned, "On the day of this festival, a youth was slain," yada, yada, yada. "He carried also the whistle, symbolical of the deity, Lord of the Night Wind, and made with it a noise such as the weird wind of night makes when it hurries through the streets."

• 12:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And it does, I mean, there's, there's videos online of people playing these, like indigenous musicians playing death whistles. And you can kind of get the idea of like, oh, okay, this kind of does sound like an agonized scream. There's a point to be made, though, that these replica death whistles, especially, you know, made by both.

• 13:07Josh Clark?

  They're larger than the the regular size. So just by that alone means they're not going to sound like the other ones will. So I think what both kind of concluded is that he's just, he's not instructed in how to play these original small

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:21Josh Clark?

  death whistles that the the sacrifice guy was was was holding.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:27Josh Clark?

  And that he just can't do it.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Never had one lesson.

• 13:30Josh Clark?

  He looked around at the crowd.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. The notion that they were maybe used in battle. They definitely did stuff like that with obviously drums, but also blowing into conch shells like the Waponee Woo. Getting together, maybe they're communicating with each other. Maybe they're just, again, trying to like scare their enemies. But when they asked both like, well, what about this death whistle? He was like, have you seen these things? He's like, this is the size of my pinky.

• 13:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  He's like, this isn't gonna scare even 300 of these isn't gonna scare anybody.

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  No, but some drums will and a conch shell will for sure.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:05Josh Clark?

  So that's it. Death whistles probably not used in battle, but almost certainly used in rituals that ended in someone's beheading.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 14:14Josh Clark?

  Chuck said that's right. I think that means short stuff, is that?

• 14:21Speaker 06

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