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Short Stuff: Aztec Death Whistle · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff, Josh, Chuck, Jerry,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and for Dave, this is short stuff stand back.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: That's right about the as Tech death whistle. We talked
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: a lot about Mexico City one of our favorite places
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: to visit. And if you go to Mexico City, you
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: should know that you are a lot of times standing
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: on the ruins of ancient burial temples as tech temples,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: and they have excavated those over the years here and there.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: And in the late nineties they excavated a temple dedicated
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: to the az Tech win God, and they uncovered the
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: remains of a twenty year old male that was beheaded,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: squatting at the base of the stairway and holding a
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: couple of musical instruments.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as an aside, I just wanted to say, I
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: think I've said it before, the Anthropological Museum in Mexico
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: City is world class.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's on my list. It'll happen next time, for sure.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: It's great for that very reason, because there's so many
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: ruins just built right over and preserved in that way.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. Mexico City's one of the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: most densely populated cities on the planet and people were
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: walking over a beheaded skeleton every day until the late
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: nineties when they excavated it. You know, yeah, so yeah,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: you said that boy. Did you say he was holding
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: whistles or did you just say he was holding something?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I said musical instruments, but you yeah, there you go.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: They're whistles.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Whistles. I mean you could have guessed that from the title, right, probably,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: but these whistles are special whistles. First of all, they're
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: kind of tiny, but if you look closely, they had
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: a skull engraved on them. And what they think this
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: whole thing represents is the kind of union or combination
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: between he Coddle and mclonticulty. These are two gods. Miclonticulty
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: is the Aztec god of the underworld and death. Hey,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Coddle is the Aztec win god. And you put them together,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: you got two very powerful gods. And they think that's
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: what these death whistles that the guy was holding symbolized.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Nice job in those pronunciations.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I really looked it up. Yeah, and dude, you should
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: see how many mispronounced words there are that they just
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: sound so confident. There's one, uh, there's a festival called
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: push coddle, toush coddle, t O x c A t L.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: You have no idea how many like how's it pronounced? Videos?
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  Speaker 1: Say tx coddle, it's not tox coddle.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty disappointing. You're not stuff out there.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: And if you're not sure how to pronounce something, don't
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: make a video telling other people how to pronounce something.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, we mispronounced stuff on this show, worldwide show,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: but we don't tell people we're pronouncing it right exactly.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: This isn't like how pronunciation works.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Come on, So this is the Aztec death whistle. Those
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: two whistles this guy had. If you do a little research,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: you're probably going to see stuff about how they were
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: used to tear enemies in battle, like they all play
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: them at once. But what we think we've come down to,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: thanks to you know, the study of a lot of people,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: but especially this one guy, Arned Both, who is a
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: music archaeologist, is that these things probably were a little
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: more ceremonial, right, and maybe used to help guide the
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: spirit in the afterlife. So this dude, I don't know
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: if he's a doctor or not, but Both is his name,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Like I said, it's very cool. He's examined ancient musical
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: instruments and artifacts, tries to in a lot of cases
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: rebuild them and take some good guesses on what they
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: were used for.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is I'm sure way harder than you would think.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So these those two death whistles were excavated in the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: late nineties, I think in just a couple of years
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: later in the aughts. But did you say booth, I
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: said both both. He was the first person to actually
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: play them, these things that were hundreds and hundreds of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: years old, that a skeleton had been holding for god
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: knows how long, well hundreds of years, and he apparently didn't.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: He was like, these they suck, These are terrible death whistles.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a little underwhelming. It didn't make the big,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: frightening noise they might have expected. So he did CT
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: scans on them, rebuilt them larger, like, you know, exact replicas,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: and he found that they were an air spring whistle.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: So the Mayans had come up with these in seven
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: to eight hundred CE, and you blow air through this
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: intake tube and it reacts with the spring of air
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: inside this chamber and distorts the sound. Then you can
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: cup your hand over the bottom like a lot of
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  Speaker 2: wind instruments and change the tone and stuff, but it's
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  Speaker 2: completely its own thing. It's not like any Western any
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  Speaker 2: other Western wind instrument.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were only made in pre Columbian America. That's
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: they are very specific. And spring in this case is
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: not like a coiled spring. It's like a spring of
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: water that you get delicious water from. Right, That's right. So,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: like I said, there's a big wait, We'll just take a.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Break, how about that. Yeah, we'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: So I said, there's a big, strong connection, as I
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: was saying before before we broke between the wind god
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: mclonticulty and a caddal and I wasn't lying. There's written
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: proof that shows that I'm correct.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: That's right. It's written in a pre Columbian document called
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: the Codex Borgia, and it is a manuscript. It's illustrated,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: and it shows. It's got a lot of stuff in there.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: It's got history, it's got like some of the things
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: that were studying, like botany, the stars, and it's got
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  Speaker 2: a great, big, comprehensive list of their pantheon of gods.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And the top notch mushroom soup casserole recipe.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: It might. For all I know, I can't tell anymore.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: So Miquelon Ticulti and a Coddal I just like saying
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: them now, I know now that I can say them correctly.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: They're back to back, arms crossed like local anchored.
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  Speaker 2: Did they invent that?
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I think so? God both looking at the at you,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the viewer, almost with a sassy kind of look on
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: their face. Sure, and they are guarding the underworld together.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: So these these guys are definitely connected in the Aztec pantheon,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: which goes to support That's what those death whistles are
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: kind of symbolizing, these two gods together that in one
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  Speaker 1: interpretation at least, you could say is life and death.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: The god of life the god of death.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: That's right, So I mentioned it may be used to
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: kind of guide you through the spirit world in that
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Aztec tradition, when someone dies, it's a pretty perilous route
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: to get to the underworld takes nine years, yeah, nine years,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And there's all kinds of rituals that people in the
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: living world do to urge them on to give them strength.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: One example here in this case it's pretty appropriate, is
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: the dead cross a large field being whipped by a wind,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: like a really fierce wind. And in that book, in
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: the Codex Borgia, those winds are represented by blades, by
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: obsidian blades, and those were the blades that they used
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: to make sacrifices. You go back to this temple site
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: where they found these whistles, and not only did they
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: have those whistles, but there was a ceramic bowl there
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: as well that had obsidian blades next to the body
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: of this guy.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And a little sign that said take one, leave one.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: So this, I mean, all of this together just basically
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: shows this is what those death whistles almost certainly were.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: And the reason that we're not just us, but both
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: in particular Booth or both the music archaeologists, is going
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: to all this trouble is because we don't know exactly
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: what these things were used for, how they were used,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: what they were meant to sound like. We just don't know.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: So you have to piece together all this disparate information
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: to kind of come together. And what it ultimately is
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: laying a pretty good case for is that these were
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: ritual musical instruments used in a specific ritual, probably like
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: you said, to help departed souls across that field, that
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  Speaker 1: one level of the underworld.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the wind.
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  Speaker 1: And then also in that festival, I talked about touch
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: coddle to honor the god tit's ketlepoca. That one is
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: pronounced like it looks.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So in nineteen thirteen there was a folklorus named
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Lewis Spence Nice who wrote really nailed that one who
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: wrote Myths of Mexico and Peru, and he described this
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: festival and this is sort of the key part as
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: far as we're concerned. On the day of this festival,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: a youth was slain YadA, YadA YadA. He carried also
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  Speaker 2: the whistle symbolical of the deity lord of the night wind,
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  Speaker 2: and made with it a noise such as the weird
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: wind of night makes when it hurries through the streets.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it does. I mean, there's videos online of
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: people playing these, like indigenous musicians playing death whistles, and
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: you can kind of get the idea of like, oh, okay,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: this kind of does sound like an agonized scream. There's
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: a point to be made though that these replica death whistles,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: especially you know, made by both they're larger than the
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: regular size, so just by that alone means they're not
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: going to sound like the other ones will. So I
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: think what both kind of concluded is that he's just
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: he's not instructed in how to play these original small
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: death whistles that the sacrifice guy was was holding, yeah,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and that he just can't do it. He never had
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: to do. He looked around at the crowd.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The notion that they were maybe used in battle.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: They definitely did stuff like that with obviously drums, but
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: also blowing into conkshells like the Waponi wu getting together.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe they're communicating with each other. Maybe they're just again
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: trying to like scare their enemies. But when they asked
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: both like well what about this death whistle, he was
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: like have you seen these things? He's like, this is
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: the size of my pinky. Yeah, it's like this didn't
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: get to scare even three hundred of these didn't gonna
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: scare anybody.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: No, but some drums will in a conk shell, well
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's it.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Death whistles probably not used in battle, but almost certainly
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: used in rituals that ended in someone's beheading. That's right,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Chuck said, that's right. I think that means short stuff
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: is it?
• 11:15
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• 11:18
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• 11:22
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