Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Aztec Death Whistle

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

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 for privacy information.

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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 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. Yeah, as an aside, I just wanted to say, I think I've said it before, the anthropological

Museum in Mexico City is world class. Yeah, that's on my list. It'll happen next time for sure. 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? Yeah. So yeah, you said that, boy, did you say he was holding whistles, or did you just say he was holding something? I said musical instruments, but Yeah, there you go. They're whistles. Whistles. I mean, you could have guessed that from the title, right?

Probably. 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 Ehickadol and McLonteculty. These are two gods. McLontikulte is the Aztec god of the underworld and death. Eh-Hatol is the Aztec wind god, and you put it together, you get two very powerful gods. And they think that's what these death whistles that the guy was holding symbolized.

Nice job in those pronunciations. I really looked it up. Yeah. And, dude, you should see how many mispronounced words there are that they just sound so confident. There's one, there's a festival called Pajkato, Tashkato, Toshkadl, Tio. X-C-A-T-L, you have no idea how many, like, how's it pronounced videos, say tox-coddle. It's not toxicoddle. Yeah, it's pretty disappointing the amount of wrong stuff out there.

Yeah, and if you're not sure how to pronounce something, don't make a video telling other people how to pronounce something. Yeah, I mean, we mispronounced stuff on this show, worldwide show, but we don't tell people we're pronouncing it right. Exactly. This isn't like how pronunciation works. Come on. 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 play them at once. But what we think we've come down to, thanks to the study of a lot of people, but especially this one guy, armed both, who is a music archaeologist, is that these things probably were a little more ceremonial.

Right. And maybe used to help guide the spirit in the aspect. 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 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. Yeah, which is, I'm sure, way harder than you would think. Yeah. So these, those two death whistles were excavated in the late 90s.

I think in just a couple of years later in the aughts, did you say Booth? I said both. 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. And he apparently didn't, he was like, these suck. These are terrible death whistles. Yeah, it was a little underwhelming.

It didn't make the big frightening noise they might. might have expected. So he did CT scans on them, rebuilt them larger, like, you know, exact replicas. And he found that they were an air spring whistle. So the Mayans had come up with these in 7 to 800 C.E. 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, and change the tone and stuff. But it's completely a its own thing. It's not like any Western, any other Western wind instrument. Yeah, they were only made in pre-Columbian America. They're 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? That's right. So, like I said, there's a big, oh, wait, we'll just take a break. How about that? Yeah, we'll be right back. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic, Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives.

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Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, so I said there's a big, strong connection, as I was saying before, before we broke, between the wind god, McElonty-Colte, and E. Caudel, and I wasn't lying. There's written proof that shows that I'm correct. 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. history. It's got like some of the things that were studying, like botany, the stars.

And it's got a great big comprehensive list of their pantheon of gods. And the top-notch mushroom soup casserole recipe. It might for all I know. I can't tell anymore. So, um, uh, mctlon ticotty, uh, and E. Coddle, I'd just like saying them now. I know that I can say them correctly. Yeah. They're back to back. Arms crossed, like local news anchors. Did they invent that? I think so.

Oh, God. Both looking at you, the viewer, almost with a sassy kind of look on their face. Sure. And they are guarding the underworld together. So these guys are definitely connected in the Aztec Pantheon, which goes to support that that's what those death whistles are kind of symbolizing. These two gods together that in one interpretation, at least, you could say is, life and death, the god of life, the god of death. That's right. So I mentioned it may be used to kind of guide you through the spirit world

in that Aztec tradition when someone dies. It's a pretty perilous route to get to the underworld. It takes nine years. Yeah, nine years. And there's all kinds of rituals that people in the living world do to like urge them on to give them strength. One example here in this case, it's pretty appropriate, is the dead cross a large field being whipped by a wind, like a really fierce wind. And in that book, in the Codex Borgia, those winds are represented by blades, by obsidian blades. And 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. And the little sign that said, take one, leave one.

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, like you said, to help departed souls across that field, that one level of the underworld. Yeah, the wind. And then also in that festival I talked about, Toshkado, to honor the god Tzket Lopocca.

That one is pronounced like it looks. Yeah, so in 1913, there was a folklorist named Lewis Spence. Nice. Who wrote, I really mailed 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 Nightwind, and made with it a noise such as the weird wind of night makes when it hurries through the streets.

Yeah. And it does, I mean, 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, that especially, you know, made by both, they're larger than 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 death whistles that the sacrifice guy was holding. Yeah. And that he just can't do it. He said I can't do. He looked around to the crowd. 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 Waponi 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. Yeah, it's tiny. He's like, this isn't going to scare.

Even 300 of these isn't going to scare anybody. No, but some drums will and a conch shell will for sure. Yeah. So that's it. Death whistles probably not used in battle, but almost certainly used in rituals that ended in someone's beheading. That's right. Chuck said that's right.

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