Psychoacoustic and archeoacoustic nature of ancient Aztec skull whistles | Hacker News Reader

Psychoacoustic and archeoacoustic nature of ancient Aztec skull whistles

nature.com

62 pointstosh33 comments

The skull whistles remind me of an experience in Central Asia. I was in an expedition camped out in the middle of nowhere, a day's drive from the nearest permanent settlement and miles from the nearest nomads. It's the middle of the night and this terrifying scream like a woman being murdered wakes me up. It was right on the edge of sounding inhuman in the same way.

The sound kept happening as I made my way down the ravine in the direction of the sound and at the bottom... Camels. Just a normal herd of camels fording the river.

There's two types of people in horror movies, the ones trying to get away from the scary things and the ones trying to get closer to the scary thing. At least you know which one you are.

Now imagine you heard that terrifying scream, followed it down the ravine, and there's a shaman sitting cross legged, looking at you unblinkingly and blowing into a human skull

Choose your own adventure:

a) you run away screaming

b) you approach and inquire what services are offered.

b) I approach and inquire what services are offered.

A) classically trained orchestral skull piper

B) artisanal skull whistle carving

C) SEO consulting for the occult

"What're ya buyin'?"

If I choose (A), does the piper become an inventory item or a companion in my quest?

A hired companion. +5 to all intimidation checks for as long as you can afford to pay them.

u guys go get a room

C) SEO consulting for the occult

Excellent choice! The shaman begins whistling and occult-related listicles and Buzzfeed-style quizzes start appearing on your domain. You now rank 4th for three occult-related keywords of your choice.

answer - you are not the user, you are the service

    Unexpected answer. Your soul has been added to the human skull.
    (R)etry, or (Q)uit?

You ever heard of a squirrel whistle? It mimics the sound of a squirrel in mortal distress. Used by hunters to attract … squirrels.

The submitted URL was https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/11/study-why-aztec-deat.... Interested readers might want to look at both.

Sound examples related to the paper: https://caneuro.github.io/blog/2024/study-skullwhistle/

via:

The scary sound of Aztec skull whistles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42181466 - Nov 2024 (27 comments)

I went in thinking... haha it's a whistle, how bad can it be.

But jesus fuck that's actually a super terrifying sound!

Wow you’re not kidding!

FYI went to Mexico City last year and you can find replica death whistles all over the place in little shops. Also some eagle sound ones, jaguar growl ones, etc. Had a lot of fun with the kids getting a bunch of different ones and they make nice little mementos! Takes a bit of practice to get the sound right, but they can be pretty loud!

I respect the rigor here, but I can't imagine "scary scream like noise was used to spook people" is a novel idea to anyone. The main interesting point to me is that it was categorized as both manmade and non manmade. If you wanted a scream you could just make one yourself. So I suppose the utility of the instrument is that the scream sounds human like but obviously isn't, adding some fear of the unknown into the mix?

>If you wanted a scream you could just make one yourself.

I would personally find it really difficult to produce a scream that replicated the sound of abject terror produced by the whistle.

My abject terror scream is a last chance for comedy.

Maybe if you tried out of the blue, but if there was a cultural incentive to practice you could probably learn to do it fairly easily.

This sound seems easier to produce with an instrument than with training. It's like a half-human, half-beast, raspy, very loud AAAAAAAAAH! Takes much less training to use the whistle properly than to imitate a signature scream perfectly.

ESR has a theory:

"The factual piece missing from the article is that sacrificial victims were drugged into semi-consciousness so they wouldn't struggle and disrupt the ceremony.

This meant they didn't scream as obsidian knives were penetrating their chests and their hearts were ripped out to be offered to the gods. Obviously, the Aztecs considered the ceremonial experience incomplete without the screaming, and built death whistles to simulate the proper sound of agony." https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1859556171918479626

not everyone is a scream queen with the ability to make that kind or any thing close we've been trained to expect as a "scream". we've probably all seen movies with armies squaring off and then yelling as they charge each other in utter stupidity, but that sounds nothing like these whistles. give a charging army these to blow in as they charge, and it would be a totally different effect. use these while hidden in the tree line like in Macbeth so you had to imagine what the thing making the noise looked like and it would be even worse. way worse than any beating drum could do

psyops are to be thought of as a minor thing at your own peril

These skull whistles were used by Erykah Badu, Marc Rebillet, and Reggie Watts on their collaborative stream session. It’s quite a fun jam to witness those three discover the sound.

Don't know if they're based on the 3d scans mentioned in the article but you can find printable STL files for skull whistles on all the major 3d model sites. They're not the easiest whistles to use but once you get the hang of it, the scream really is eerie, though not very loud.

The debate over their use reminds me a bit of the Buck Rogers tv show where sometimes Buck was amused by the misperceptions of a contemporary historian on the use of certain 20th century artifacts, including the belief that a hanging Tiffany lamp was some kind of electric salad bowl.

You can print one with a 3d printer, they're on thingiverse. Sure to be a hit at parties!

It's kind of a freaky sound, yes, but seems to me that we wouldn't react like this if it wasn't called a skull whistle. Like, if it were sculpted like a puppy and called the Aztec Doggie Whistle.

It would be called the Aztec Doggie Death Whistle or similar, because normal doggies don't sound like that at all. Also, the intended targets didn't have chance to examine the whistle up close.

not sure if anybody has heard the whistle sound before but its frightening. I'd imagine tens of thousands of whistles going off would strike fear into any invading force

> Skull whistles can produce softer hiss-like ...

If any whistle-like instrument is just hissing, you obviously don't have the hang of it yet.

Not sure if it's remotely correct, but I immediately thought of Bone Tomahawk. <shudders>

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