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Throwback: The Aztec Death Whistle! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_08: You must excuse me.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_08: Simple and easy in the moment.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_08: But you've learned a lesson.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_08: A lesson in honesty.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_08: Honesty to yourself and honesty to others.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_08: That lesson must stand you in good step on your mind.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_08: I think we've all learned a good lesson.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_08: I've always heard that honesty is the best policy.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_08: Now I'm catching on to why that's so, no, why that's so no why that's so.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Ostlantes, the podcast where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and along the way, we challenge pseudo-historical distortions and confront the disinformation that too often surrounds these very topics.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_04: And Ruben Ariano Tlakatekatl.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: How are you, Dr.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: Tlakatekatl?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_04: How are things in Tehaslan?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_04: Tehaslan.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_04: Gee, how much time do we have?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_04: No, we're we're doing good over here.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, considering everything that's going on.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um just uh as I mentioned previously in another episode, just kind of focusing on myself and my family and just taking it easy.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_04: And it's the start of summer.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um we just ended the spring semester, although you know, I'm always busy, so I'm teaching over the summer.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: So um, but you know, it's it's not the same as the full load during the semester, right?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_04: So in that sense, I get I get a little bit of extra free time, and uh we'll see.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: We'll we'll see what comes of of this summer.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_04: Well, they keep you busy, that's for sure.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_04: What about you?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_04: What are you up to?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh just work, man.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: We were doing an excavation down in southern New Mexico, and most recently I've been up in Taos, near Taos, um working up there.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, it's it's beautiful up there, you know Taos.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: I I passed by your uh your alma mater.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: Right, Fort Berwin.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Over at Taos.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Taos.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Front of the Taos.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's what they call that little town.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Just outside of Taos.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll I'll pass right through there and I always think of you like, oh shit, that's where Reuben was.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's a site back there in and down like when you're coming down that road from the main road up to uh to Taos.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, you told me.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and like if you so where four burgunas were the entrances on the opposite side of the road, if you follow, there's like a couple of buildings in the back area that kind of look like chalets, um, and back in that general direction, but more like towards the left-hand side of the trail.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_04: If you go, if you hike like maybe 30 minutes or so, like you'll hit a uh ancient uh Pueblo site that some of the first excavations that they were doing at Fort Berwin when this the location was first donated to a SMU um were done at that site.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I just happened to stumble upon it one day because I was just going on a hike and I went off the beach.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_04: And then I just stumbled upon it, man.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_04: I was like, what is this?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_04: Whoa, it's pretty cool because it even has a kiva, and I got a chance to go down the ladder and into the kiva, and I just kind of sat there for a couple of hours just soaking it in, you know, being in that space.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: It was great.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: That's really cool.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, speaking of excavations, uh we're we're digging up some shit today.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: You like that transition?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, are you gonna reveal something?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: No, but uh you know, we've been talking about doing this topic for a while and uh it came up in the Discord.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um because people were talking about this movie in the Discord.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I think it's called The Whistle.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I haven't seen it, but I have seen the trailer and uh I've got questions about this movie.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately, I think these questions are gonna go unanswered because I I don't think I'm gonna be watching this movie.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_09: Right.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_04: What my what songs?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: It seems like a very um I don't know, not a great movie.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, if you're just looking for cheese on a on a Friday night and you ain't got nothing else to do and horrible cheese at that, then why not?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_05: Have you seen it?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_05: Did you watch it?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_04: No, but I'm thinking about it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_04: I'm thinking about it.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_04: Why not?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I saw that other one, what was it called?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_04: Ruins from 2008.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: To the Teocali.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that one was pretty cool, man.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_04: Like if they did more movies like that, because I don't know if anyone's seen this and spoiler alert, but um the premise of the movie is that the the local indigenous inhabitants like they are used to people like stumbling on on their secret sites, and they know that the secret of the site is that the temple, there's like some kind of entity in the temple that lures tourists in there and it drives them mad and it slowly kind of like wraps them up in some vines and consumes them.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like that's okay, so that like that's like that's the sacred thing.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_04: Consumes them physically, physically or something like that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so it's been a while since I've seen it, but it's like if it's something like that, I'll I'll enjoy it because I mean it's ridiculous, right?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_04: But it's it's a horror movie.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what I like is in the trailer, they're showing the guy, like the professor, presumably holding the the whistle in his hand, yeah, and he's like reading an inscription off the side of it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, what language was that written in?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what the hell are you reading?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm hey, this might have been answered in the movie, but you know.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: Who knows?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: Who knows?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then they give away, like, within the trailer itself, they give away a twist, which is that and I hate when movies do this, it's like a trailer is just supposed to give you a little taste to pique your interest, right, and not tell you the entire plot of the movie and all the twists and turns.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: But earlier on in the in the trailer, the guy like reads an inscription and it says like whistle this to summon death.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: Which is a weird idea anyway.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: But then later on in the in the trailer, they reveal like it was a mistranslation.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's you know, blow this whistle to summon your death.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: Ah, okay.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the twist, right?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a twist that they give away in the freaking trailer.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: But then it just raises more questions for me.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, well, then what purpose does this object serve if you're just gonna blow it and then something comes and kills you?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, there has to be some sort of trade-off, right?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like you get something good first.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then you die?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then you die?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like, there has to be some sort of soul to the devil, right?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, right?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_04: Like I want this, I want this song to be a number one hit, right?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_04: And so I'm gonna make a pact with the devil, sell my soul so I can be famous or something.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: Otherwise, why would you just blow an object that's like, okay, come murder me?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: True, true.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: Why would that exist?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: So you've just ruined the movie, curling cat.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and like it the trailer ruined the movie.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it wasn't that far into the trailer.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I was the trailer's too long, too.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_04: It's like two and a half minutes.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like a trailer should be what 30 seconds maybe, something real short.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_04: A minute tops.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_04: But um, what about this I this connection to this idea to um because I've heard people say this that in some indigenous cultures that whistling at night it's is kind of taboo because it's like summoning the spirits or something.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely here in the southwest.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: In New Mexico, um, you are not supposed to whistle at night.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how far that carries over into other cultures.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: But um But do you know the reasoning behind that?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like, what's the I don't.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I don't know.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_04: There you go.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_04: So you want to get into it?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, sir.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_04: All right, so here we go.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: Here we go.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: This is the Aztec so-called death whistle, I should say.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_04: Today we're talking about how we tell history and specifically how the media treats indigenous cultures.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_04: We are diving into uh a recent cultural history of the so-called Aztic death whistle.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_04: So, like Curly mentioned, we've been wanting to do this uh topic for a very long time.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, the that recent uh movie kind of prompted it, but also the fact that there was uh some discourse on the Discord about this topic also kind of prompted this this recent uh interest into not only the death whistle, but also prompted us to, hey, maybe we should do something.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, like what is what is the point of this, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_04: What is the main question at hand here?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_04: How and why is the whistle uh popular?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_04: How did it become so popular nowadays?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_04: Because it didn't just come out of nowhere, it didn't just pop in out of thin air and someone just came up with this idea.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, what if we there was such a thing as an ASTIC death whistle?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_04: So let's let's try to dig into that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_04: Because that is to us, to me, to those of us on the Discord, that is a very interesting question.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_04: What is the origin of all this, right?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, of all the things attributed to the Aztecs that people would gravitate towards in popular media, a whistle that is associated with death is going to make that list, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, think about all the other things that the public associates with the Aztecs.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_04: It's always disproportionately related to violence and death, right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: One way or another, it relates to violence or death or sacrifice.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_04: So, even for instance, the explosion of the Día de los Muertos or the Day of the Dead over the last couple of decades, 20 years or so, while it is kind of a positive thing because in our culture it's about, you know, the memory and the celebration of our deceased loved ones, it's still about death, right?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_04: And so the fact that other than Mexican people and other indigenous peoples of the South celebrate it now, namely Anglos, right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_04: And including Europeans too, apparently like to celebrate the loss muertos, it's still about death.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_04: So there's something about death, right?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: That's always associated with indigenous, especially Mesoamerican cultures, and more specifically the Aztecs, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_04: So how do we get here, right?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_04: Why the whistle?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: What's going on with this whistle?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_04: So it's useful to note that the Aztec death whistle has been known to archaeologists, despite what people might tell you on the internet, it's been known to archaeologists since the late uh or the mid to late 19th century when some of the first small death whistles uh were being um discovered.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I think you have one, don't you, Carly?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_04: You want to uh blow it for the audience or for the listeners or for the viewers on YouTube?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: This isn't like a quote unquote death whistle that people think of, you know, like the one in the movie, which is like this big evil, you know, ostentatious looking thing.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: But um this is probably closer to what they were finding um uh archaeologically, and this this one is probably even larger than than the one that they found.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um because it from what I've seen in the photographs, the the whistles that they found in situ in the burials as offerings were like they could fit in the palm of your hand, basically.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: And the burials that they were associated with are commonly with uh uh tlaloc, right?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: They're they're commonly associated with uh the veneration of tlaloc or offerings made to tlaloc.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean not tlaloc, eheket, grief.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: So makes an up my teteo over here.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um so they're commonly uh used in association with the veneration of ehekat, which is of course the wind, which makes sense when you hear this whistle, um, if I may.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: So you know, there you go.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: It sounds like a horror.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it's reasonable to uh assume, in my opinion, that that sound that you just heard was meant to replicate the sound of the wind, and that's why it would be associated with uh ehekat.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's also some some scholarship that ties it to um the Ishitla of Tescatlipoca during the um the ceremony of Toshka.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't see any of that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe we can uh get more into that in the post-discussion.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_05: Cool, cool.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_04: So since um at least the late 19th century, scholars have been know knowing about this.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so scholars largely ignored it because uh they saw it more as a curiosity, they didn't really know what to do with it, what to make of it, until 1999, when an archaeological discovery in Tlatelolco changed the perception and led to a more serious investigation of the whistle.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_04: The site held the remains of an individual clasping a whistle, as Curly just mentioned, in each hand.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_04: So there was a whistle in each one of this person's hands, and this led to a momentary surge on the topic among archaeology and enthusiasts.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_04: So we're gonna get to that a little bit later, but first we're gonna come back to the article in question.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um, as I was looking around, I found a 2021 article from the Daily Science Journal by Alex Mitchell entitled The ASTIC Death Whistle in Histories is History's reminder that the Aztecs were terrifying, right?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_04: So this idea of terror, terrifying, horrible, horrendous.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so the title of this piece says it all, right?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I've been calling this guy a goober of goofball, but I mean, uh I don't want to get into ad hominems, but come on, guy, really?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_04: Like that's the best title you could come up with for your article.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, hyperbole much.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: Good grief.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_04: Now, if you spent any time on TikTok, YouTube, or Etsy over the last few years, you've probably seen these skull-shaped clay whistles.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: When people blow into them, as Curly just did, they make this sound that some describe as a quote unquote human being screaming in agony.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I didn't get that from this, but hey, I don't know.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_04: When I hear it, it sounds like a strong wind gust being forced into a compressed space.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_04: But again, what do I know?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just some schmuck, right?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_04: The internet loves it, and I get it.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_04: People like sensationalism, especially when it comes to past cultures that are not their own.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_04: But since this quote unquote journal, the term journal is being used loose loosely here, describes itself as a site for a popular science.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_04: And I have a few things to say about that, precisely because the author wrote about a topic that they know absolutely nothing about.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it comes through with an article, right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_04: So, what exactly is the story and how are they selling it to the public?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: While the article is construed as a fun, quick read, if you look at it through an indigenous lens, the cynicism, the cultural insensitivity, and the tired stereotypes are difficult to ignore.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_04: You must be completely indifferent to Native American indigenous representation or willfully ignorant of Mesoamerican culture to think this type of interpretation is acceptable or meaningful.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_04: So let's break down why.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: Leaning into the scary, savage stereotype.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_04: First off, let's look at the tone.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_04: The article doesn't start with a deep breath and a look at history, it jumps straight into horror movie mode.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_04: Right out of the gate, it uses the words like quote unquote bone chilling or nightmarish, and frames the artifact with the dramatic title that I just mentioned, The Azte death Whistle, is history's reminder that the Astics were terrifying, right?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_04: So playing into these tropes.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_04: So by kicking things off this way, the article instantly leans into an old harmful stereotype, the idea of the quote unquote bloodthirsty savage, right?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_04: Western media has been obsessed with Mesoamerican violence and human sacrifice for centuries.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yet sacrifice happened, uh, but the Mexicaastic death and the sacrifices weren't senseless acts meant to scare people.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_04: They were deeply spiritual duties tied to specific ethno-cosmological rites of sacrality and balance, which existed before Western European worldviews were superimposed through intentional and deliberate acts of violence, coloniality, and oppression, as we discussed in the sacrifice episode.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_04: Thus, when the article filters a deeply spiritual object entirely through the lens of a Hollywood jump scare, it strips away the cultural dignity of the artifact.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_04: It turns a piece of ancient sophisticated acoustic engineering into a cheap Hollywood prop.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I was muted.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: Blurring the lines of real history.
• 18:16
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• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: This December, I will be joining Skeptoid Adventures as your guide for the mysteries of the Maya.
• 18:41
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• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: Together, we'll examine the archaeology, history, and culture of one of the world's greatest civilizations through the lens of evidence, not sensationalism.
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• 19:22
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• 19:37
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• 19:50
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• 19:57
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• 20:09
  SPEAKER_04: The second issue is that the article plays a bit fast and loose with the actual science and history.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: It lumps different cultures together as they're apt to do all the time, right?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_04: Under the generic label of Aztic, even though these kinds of clay instruments were made by various groups across Mesoamerica over thousands of years.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_04: Even worse, the article tries to act like a referee between real science and internet gossip, but it gives them both the same amount of spotlight.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_04: You know, strike a balance, both sides in the whole thing.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_04: For example, it mentions that some people on the internet think the whistles were used for quote unquote sound therapy or healing.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe who who can who can tell, right?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: Then it wraps up the debate with a very casual shrug.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: While what these whistles meant to the Aztecs remains unknown, there's little doubt that death whistles were associated with human sacrifice.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because of course obviously.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because anything you find in a burial has to be sacrificial.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, look, we found a sacrificial spoon and a sacrificial bowl.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Right, that's to keep the person alive, right?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, obviously.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's good grief.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_04: They made the bossola right into the body.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_04: Tribus.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_04: By summarizing it like that, the writer is doing something kind of sneaky.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_04: They are saying, hey, nobody really knows, so let's just focus on the scary stuff, okay?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_04: So to a casual reader, it makes it sound Sound like serious archaeologists and random internet influencers have equally valid theories, you know, both sides in the game.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, what I love about this is that they're like, you know, it it remains unknown what they meant, but it obviously meant this.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: But if we're looking at it from a certain perspective, yeah, it's we're gonna make it mean what we want it to mean.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty much.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_04: Plus, the article only names a single archaeologist, and here I'm gonna I'm I'm having trouble with this name.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_04: Do you know this individual?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_04: Do you know how to say this person's name?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: Arnib, I think is how you say maybe Arned Odgeboth.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: Arnold sounds like a bounty hunter in Star Wars.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: We've hired Arned Odjboth to bring you in to Jobba the Hut.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_04: Or Pizza the Hut.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_04: Without saying much about, right, so this archaeologist, we're just gonna shorten him to Both.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_04: So the article names Both without saying much about his work, not a single quote or citation, prize.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_04: It just says, quote unquote, experts say, which makes the whole thing feel more like an echo chamber of internet rumors than actual science journalism.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_04: And so there's a video that is embedded within this article, and uh I think uh we're gonna watch it now and go through it at this and and uh maybe comment along the way.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_04: Like uh what do you think, Carly?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: All right, so for our listeners, this video it it looks like it was taken at um probably at Mexica New Year or some other similar event.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: And um there's a man, is this is uh Javier Qijas, right?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Javier Quijas.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah and it was produced by g uh the website Gizmodo, I think that's how you say Gizmodo.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_04: Gizmodo is it's a design, technology, and science fiction uh website.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so the the the video that they have is called Hear the Astric Death Whistle, the mystified scientist that mystified scientists, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_04: Hear the Astric Death Whistle, that mystified scientists.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_05: And so we're gonna play it and uh react to it in real time.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_05: So let's see what this video has to say.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: In 2013, a video of a man holding a skull-shaped instrument he calls a death whistle began making the rounds on YouTube.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Once played, the death whistle sound is immediately unsettling.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_04: Unsettling.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_04: Unsettling.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know, I find that soothing.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_06: When I heard it for the first time, sounds like the ending were produced through the whistle.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_06: Shriek of death.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_06: Shriek of death.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, the significance behind this is uh an artist at New York City.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: What was this death whistle?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what was its purpose?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: He's originally from Dallas.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I know the guy in Mexico City, while archaeologists were unearthing the remains of an ancient Aztec temple, they made an exciting discovery.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_06: This was an enormous finding.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_06: They found a human sacrifice, a male skeleton that had been interred for 500 years.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it was the relics hidden inside the skeleton's hands that would lead to years of intrigue.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_07: The person had been beheaded with arms crossed in front of his chest.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_04: Listen to the voice of the boss.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: For nearly fifteen years, these ancient instruments lay silent before finally being given a voice.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: But how could these tiny objects produce such ghastly shrieks?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_07: And thus the Aztecs were able to produce a very shrill and noisy sound.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Still, the question remained: what was the purpose of these artifacts?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Theories abounded in academic circles.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_06: Abounded.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_06: The Aztecs were known for their warfare military, for their conquests.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_06: During times of war, there were these large wooden drums that were played as an artifact.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_06: That's a weird position in the world.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_06: The same as they were fighting against the Aztecs.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_06: They said that those were sounds coming from hell.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: With this in mind, some experts theorize the death vessels could have been used in a similar way.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_06: You can imagine the frightening sound if you had 200 or 300 or 5,000 warriors blowing these instruments in the world.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_06: No, that would be cool.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_06: I can imagine that they're advancing.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_06: That would be extremely intimidating.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: As the people of Mérida, Yucatan experience increasing urbanization and gentrification, there are fewer opportunities for diverse and intergenerational communities to engage with local culture.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: In response, Lignum was created.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: Lignum is a community-based space located in Merida where people come together to connect, create, and grow.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: Since its launch in 2024, Lignum has offered a community seed bank, contemporary Maya language classes and revitalization programs, as well as workshops on screen printing, documentary screenings, and casual gatherings that nourish both mind and spirit.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: Most of these workshops are free or donation-based, and they are hosted by indigenous and local experts.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: At their urban Milpa, they practice indigenous science that respects the natural cycles of the region.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Lignum is a haven for culture, rest, and resistance.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: So just check the show notes and click the link marked Support Lignum, and you can make Lignum more welcoming, accessible, and resilient with your small donation.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: Now, on with the show.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_06: The burial of this male skeleton wasn't done in an arbitrary or haphazard way.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_06: It was strategically placed right in front of the structure of the wind god Ahicot.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_06: It was meant for him to take these whistles and blow through them so that the spirit of the wind could take him through the underworld safely.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_06: So there was a very dark side to it, a gruesome side to it, but this is a very beautiful and blissful and divine part of this whole experience.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: While their exact purpose remains a mystery, these whistles, once thought to be trinkets and relegated to museum archives, are being given their due as works of cultural significance.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: And five hundred years later, the whistle still has the power to unnerve anyone who hears its sound.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_04: And that was the shire once again at the end.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_04: So I just want to say for the record, I know Jaime, he was one of the the people that was interviewed, and if you're listening, Jaime, uh no offense.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_04: We're just doing a critique.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_04: Don't take it personal.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um so uh a few things about that video.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, a couple of things.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh one we they it's it's pure conjecture, right?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um the idea that they were blowing whistles and drumming to intimidate the enemy doesn't really stand up because we know from scholarship that these instruments which were present on the battlefield were actually being used to direct the movement of troops.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: So you had the guys wearing the uh the estandartes or the banners on their backs, and they were like so the the leaders of the battles could l overlook the battlefield and see from the positioning of these flags where certain troops were positioned, and then they could use the atecocoli or the drums or whistles to send out signals on where the troops should be moved to.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: So this this sound might have had, I mean, it would have been like a uh a side effect, right, of of the sound.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: It it might have been intimidating because you're hearing this massive army forming against you, moving against you, but I don't think the the primary purpose was to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think it had a more practical purpose of you know what this reminds your troops.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_04: A while back, I don't remember how far back it was, because I tried looking into it, but I didn't find any evidence of it.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_04: But I believe for a while there was some internet rumor going around that that when the Mechica went into battle that they would they would all say Mexica or something to that effect to in unison as a battle cry to to frighten their enemy somehow.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, how does that work?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_04: How would you say in mechika in unison?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I guess maybe if you're like trying to intimidate, but is it gonna terrify your enemy?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, maybe not, I don't know.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_04: But it kind of has that same kind of the that that tinge to it of this idea that they're they're doing something in unison to terrify their enemy of some sort.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: To me, it sounds like something like that would be meant to um more meant to like hype you up, right?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: To get to build everybody.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's getting everybody hyped and and ready to go engage in combat because this idea that you know uh it's it's all about intimidation and striking fear in the heart of your enemies.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, look strike force.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: Death whistle strike force.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, where you go.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: We need to build a death whistle strike force.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: Death whistle strike force.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's that was the name of my favorite alternative rock band uh in 1998.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: Death Whistle Strike Force.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um But look, you're fighting another professional army, like you're fighting other trained warriors.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: So they would be hep to any tactics that you're gonna try to use to intimidate them.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna be like, yeah, okay.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like they're not gonna know, okay, oh we see what they're doing, we see what they're up to.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_04: Like they're gonna be so naive about the whole thing that they're not gonna know.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what's going on?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: What's that sound?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's pretty ridiculous.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's infantilizing in a lot of ways.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_05: Whoever came up with that, please stop.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_05: Stop coming up with things just knock it off.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_05: Take a break.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_05: Take a break.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_05: All right, cynical chase for clicks.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_04: So this brings us to the third point: the cynicism of it all.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_04: You can really tell this article was written to ride the wave of internet and viral trends.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_04: The author even steps out of the story to pitch their own content, dropping in casual blog style side notes like you can read some of that fascinating history in my article here.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_04: When a writer does that, it changes the vibe.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't feel like someone who is trying to educate the public, it feels like an influencer trying to keep you clicking around their website.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_04: Posting.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's all about posting now.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a brand, right?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone's a brand now.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_04: The article wraps up by pointing out that you can buy cheap replica death whistles all over the web today.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_04: And notes that a very few sound like the wind.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_04: I don't even know what that means.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_04: What are they trying to say there?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_04: Are they saying the people that that think it sounds like a wind are mistaken because it's horrible?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because it's obviously meant to be human beings screening in terror.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_04: Agony.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's a human in agony.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a playful conversational sign-off, but it reveals the real motive here that the article isn't written to make you think deeply about the incredible craftsmanship of Mesoamerican people.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_04: It's written to capitalize on a viral trend using shock value to drive traffic.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: If we want to truly appreciate history, especially the history of cultures that were devastated by colonization, we must do better than clickbait.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_04: We need to remember that behind the so-called terrifying streak of the whistle was a complex society of artists, engineers, and spiritual people who deserve to have their stories told with respect, not just for entertainment.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely, man.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then looking at that headline again, um, just to reiterate, the Aztec death whistle is history's reminder that the Aztecs were terrifying.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: Not that the Aztecs were musicians, not the Aztecs were ceramicists who were able to make these instruments.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: Not that the Aztecs were brilliant, but that they were terrifying.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_04: Or that they were the original uh descendants of a uh what is it?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um Atlantis.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_04: I'm kidding, my Aslantis and my Atlantis computers.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_03: I've done that before.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: People are like, what the hell are you talking about?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: A closer look at representation.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_04: So I wanted to use this article as basis for this topic of the death whistle because it allows us to check several boxes.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_04: The first box underscores how the media continues to misrepresent native indigenous cultures and peoples in a devalued and dismissive way.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_04: Well, there have been gains and improvement overall.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_04: This piece from just five years ago, I should mention here, demonstrates how much more we still have to go, especially in today's political climate.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_04: I can't reiterate that enough, right?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_04: A case in point is the recent destruction of Las Playas Intaglio, which is an ancient Tahono Ortam site located within the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona along the US-Mexico border, because of the construction of the border wall.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: Curly, could you please explain to our listeners what Intaglios are?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, in the sense being used here, Intaglios are designs etched directly into desert pavements.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: So these are stable, tightly packed gravel surfaces that form over long periods in extremely dry environments like the Mojave and Sonoran deserts.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: So while Peru's famous Nazca lines are the world's most recognizable examples, these unique features exist on every inhabited continent in the American Southwest.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: They are concentrated along the lower Colorado River.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: This area forms a deeply significant cultural landscape tied directly to the human tribes and their Patayan ancestors.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: Though Intaglios, Intaglios also reach into the ancestral lands of the Odam, Kawila, and Chemewe peoples.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I just wanted to add that probably the most well-known in the Southwest would be the ones located near and around Blythe, California.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think those are the ones that get brought up the most.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_04: I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: Cool, cool.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_04: So the damage in question occurred at the hands of a construction company hired by the federal government in their ongoing border wall travesty across the southwest.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_04: The construction crews and government officials were informed by the tribe themselves and others of the site's importance and significance, but they ignored the pleas from the tribe and went ahead with their plans anyway.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_04: This isn't the first time that the government has trampled on something sacred to the Tohono and other indigenous peoples along the border.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: And if I could just interject really quick, um I've been noticing online, because I'm a member of several archaeology groups, that some engineering companies are actively trying to recruit archaeologists now to serve as monitors for a two-year stint.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's an obvious, they're not saying specifically what the project is, but it's apparent that they're trying to hire people to go work on the border wall.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's it's caused a lot of arguments.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um but to do what?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what are the archaeologists supposed to do if they're just gonna bulldoze over a site anyway?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: So in cases like that, you know, where it's gonna happen anyway.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, like for example, if we know that there's a site and there's going to be a freeway built that's gonna cut directly through the site.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um in fact, I can even go one better than that.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: Recently, my my most recent project down in southern New Mexico, near Chaparral, New Mexico, which is like right near the border, there is this uh roundabout.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: And if you get on that roundabout, it'll take you straight down to uh El Paso.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: Or you can go up to uh you can like go east to Chaparral or north to Las Cruces.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: So where this roundabout is is they are going to obliterate this roundabout and they're going to build this new network of like flyovers and and roads and stuff, right?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: But there was a huge, pretty big, substantial um Jornada Mogollon site located right there.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: And the project was basically it's out of our hands, right?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna happen.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's nothing anybody could do, the government's already decided this is the way it's gonna go.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: So in that case, we had to go down and basically do what's called a uh a full data recovery.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: So we had to collect, physically collect every last artifact there, ex fully excavate it, pull out all the cultural material, document it, photograph it, map it in, and then hold it uh, you know, and basically preserve it so that those cultural materials will not be destroyed by the construction of this new system.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to hire archaeological monitors to go out there and you know, honestly, I think it's just um it's purely symbolic, right?
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: They're they're they're they're they're gonna destroy these sites anyway, whether there's archaeologists there or not.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's caused a lot of arguments on these groups that I'm a member of on whether it's ethical to go be a part of this project.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yeah, because I've even heard that they've uncovered uh remains as well during some of this uh uh wall construction.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I think uh I might have even seen that some of them belong to the Tohono Ootham as well.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_04: So like the site is just one of many things that like I was mentioning, like they have to be vigilant of because this border wall has been devastating for their community since the whole thing began and during the first uh Trump uh presidency, right?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, it's literally splitting this nation in half, right?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_04: Right, because it's one of the few that has peoples on both sides of the border, if I'm not mistaken, right?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_04: So again, uh this did not happen last year, this did not happen five years ago, this did not happen back in the early days of archaeology when people didn't really pay attention to you know these sorts of things.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_04: It happened today in the current year of 2026, under the auspices of the most anti-indigenous administration in modern history.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_04: I cannot stress that enough.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_04: They've all been disastrous in one way or the other for indigenous people, but in recent memory, even Nixon wasn't this.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, Nixon, the most corrupt president up until the current one, right?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_04: He did things for the Pueblo people, right?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_04: Didn't he like was part of um uh giving back a lake to the Taos Pueblo up in what's the name of that lake up there?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_04: There's a there's a lake that that was part of their sacred uh ceremony and sacred sites, and I'm blanking on the name of it, but I do remember that um that he he was responsible for for giving the the Taos Pueblo back that lake, and he all he was also the president that if I'm not mistaken was the one who uh signed into uh legislation, the EPA, right?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_04: The Environmental Protection Agency.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_04: So even the most corrupt president up to the current one did things at least that were beneficial to the environment in some way and and beneficial to native people in some way.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_04: So when I say that this current administration is the most damaging to indigenous people, the most anti-indigenous, I'm not being hyperbolic here.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_04: This these are the facts, right?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_04: So as an educator myself, when I tell my students that native history matters, this is exactly what I'm talking about, this sort of thing, right?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_04: This is not ancient history, this is not dead history, this is ongoing history.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_04: The topic of the Blue Lake, sorry the Blue Lake, I couldn't remember the name of the Blue Lake, right?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_04: So the topic of the ongoing material destruction of native indigenous sites deserves its own episode, I think, at some point.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_04: We need to dive into this, and so you know, but it's relevant here because I wanted to make a note of it so that you can be informed because it ties into the whole idea of misrepresentation and uh devaluing indigenous cultures and and and their history, right?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_04: All the way to the present.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: The never-ending orientalizing.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_04: So another box that this piece checks is the perennial, and I'm gonna I'm gonna have trouble with this word, fetishization.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_04: Ah, I got it, of native indigenous culture.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_04: Or the never ending orientalizing.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_04: So, Curly, please, will you define the term orientalism for us for those of us who don't know what it means?
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: Orientalism, a term popularized by literary theorist Edward Said in his No, it's Said.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: Edward Said.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: Said, sorry.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: Edward Said in his nineteen seventy-eight book refers to the way the West has historically imagined, represented, and stereotyped Eastern societies, or quote unquote the Orient, as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and inherently inferior.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: Instead of providing an objective or accurate portrayal of Eastern cultures, these Western representations found in literature, academic scholarship, art, and political policy served to construct a rigid us versus them dichotomy.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: By framing the East as irrational and passive in contrast to a rational and progressive West, Orientalism provided a powerful cultural justification for European colonialism and imperialism, asserting that Western intervention was necessary to govern and civilize the East.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: Sounds like the some uh manifest destiny horseshit right there.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_04: So, as you can tell, this idea of devaluing non-European or so-called Western cultures has a deep history.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_04: And it really starts, I mean, if you think about it, it really starts back in when the Orientalism of the Middle East, and then they brought those ideas to America when Europeans started um you know civilizing the Americas, quote unquote civilizing.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_04: Another way of looking at this is referred to the othering, right?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_04: Whereby the dominant culture plays up the cultural differences of a minoritized group in such a way that leads to essentialized caricatures of those cultures and people, such as the quote-unquote noble or the quote-unquote savage Indian.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's clear that the current interest in the whistle is a product of that binary.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_04: On the one hand, the claim is that it was used for rituals associated with death, but construed a certain way, it can be fetishized as a sign of hardcore quote unquote coolness, as some comments in the previously uh mentioned video that we watched noted.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_04: Curly?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_04: Alright, so I'm going to quote these people.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_04: These are best uh online troll voices.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_05: All right.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: Imagine finding that sound soothing or even comforting.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: Damn, the Aztecs were metal as fog.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: Or here's another comment.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: But on, but on Imagine hearing this played as you were getting flayed alive, mocking your screams of horror while dying.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_04: Oh no, genius.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's what we'll say.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_04: Genius, I mean yes.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_04: But again, I'm not hearing the agony of the Did you hear any agony in that?
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_04: All I heard was the wind.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know where they're getting this from.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, are we not hearing the same thing?
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_04: I need to get my interest checked or something.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_04: So again, the main object of desire expressed in these types of comments uh is the idea of death, violence, and torture.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_04: I'm no psychologist or sociologist, but if viewed from a certain perspective, this sentiment can be used to describe the embodiment of the moral deficiency of our modern reality.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_04: However, none of this really gets at the reason why the whistle is popular right now.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_04: So let's get to that.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: The intersection of science and performance.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_04: Both and shayot.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_04: So now we get to the nitty-gritty.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_04: The modern revival of the Aztic death whistle relies on a fascinating some symbiotic relationship between academic archaeology and indigenous performance.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_04: This intersection is best embodied by the parallel work of music archaeologist Dr.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_04: Arnd Ajboth and the late musician and instrument maker Maestro Javier Quijas Ishayot, who 2020.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_04: While both approaches the resonator, as whistles are called, resonators, through the lens of empirical science and rigorous sight context, Ishayot breathed visceral life into the instrument, introducing its haunting acoustics to global popular culture.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_04: The structural and sonic parameters of the whistle remained largely theoretical until these two trajectories crossed paths in the laboratory and the recording studio.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_04: Both's connection to the instrument is foundational to its modern scientific narrative.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_04: He was the first scholar, as mentioned in the video, permitted to physically blow the original 550-year-old clay whistle recovered during the 1999 Tlatelolco excavations.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_04: Where archaeology categorized the artifact as a static structural anomaly, Both recognized its psychoacoustic intent.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_04: His research mapping the airflow, dynamics, and internal chaos chambers, as he called them, proved that the instrument targeted highly sensitive human hearing frequencies to evoke trance states of terror.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_04: I'm again with this terror, I'm not seeing it.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'm not.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_04: So Both noted the intense, unsettling nature of the sound.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, before I read this quote, I just want to say that uh I find it highly improbable and unlikely that no archaeologist uh blew into this whistle at no point during this time.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I mean that's not something about I was the very first one to blew into this thing still.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like, okay.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_04: Tone it down, Bob.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: Tone it down.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: So to quote Both, my experience is that at least some prehispanic sounds are more destructive than positive.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: Others are highly trance evocative.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: Surely the sounds were used in all kind of cults, such as sacrificial ones, but also in healing ceremonies.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: That quote, dude, I'm serious.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_04: He wants to have it both ways.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_04: It was both healing and sacrificial.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, get this guy on the history channel, right?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's the hometeot.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_04: Ooh, we finally we finally found the truth.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_04: Simultaneously, Ishayot approached the instrument from a perspective of indigenous reclamation and spiritual continuation.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_04: Ishayot was of Wisharitari or Wichol descent, and he dedicated his life to researching ancient codices and manuscripts to reverse engineer and reconstruct lost Mesoamerican aerial phones.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_04: And if you know anything about Ishayot, I mean I have I still have like several of his CDs.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_04: When I first encountered his work, I was amazed.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_04: And when I started to like research the background of of his you know musical instruments and and and found out that he like went back into the archives and into the codices and he was trying to replicate the various whistles and various wind instruments that he came up with based on on just his own knowledge.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_04: It just blew my mind, right?
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_04: Like I that's and so of course it's gonna be him who's gonna uh you know make the the new versions of of those uh so-called death whistles.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_04: So rather than treating the whistles as museum relics, Ishayot viewed them as living creations or I mean extensions of Mother Earth and ancestral memory.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_04: Utilizing clay, stone, and jade, he became the foremost global authority on crafting functional replicas that accurately mirrored the physical acoustics analyzed by scholars like Both and mechanical engineer Roberto Velazquez Cabrera, whom we're we're gonna get into shortly.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_04: Both and Ishayot had divergent narratives.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_04: One viewed the whistle as part of quote unquote the sacred wind, and the other as a weapon for, quote, psychological warfare, right?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_04: So sacred wind would be Ishayot and the warfare is Both.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_04: The dialogue between Both's academic research and Ishayot's public presentations highlights an ongoing debate regarding the whistle's primary socio-religious function.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_04: Those who favor the ritualistic atmospheric model rely strictly on the archaeological data from the Heka temple complex.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_04: Both both maintain, no, sorry, Both maintains that it gets tricky after a while, that especially when you're talking about two people.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_04: That the skull whistle was a highly specialized and rare ritual object.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_04: In his framework, the sound simulates the cutting, the underworld winds of a hecat, that a supposed sacrificial victim, their soul, had to endure, making it an instrument of transition, offering, and a sacred atmosphere.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_04: So again, Bothier is like embedding a lot of his own bias, or I don't know what to make of that.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_04: He's taking some artistic liberties with his uh analysis.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_04: The cultural perspective, again, this is the more Ishayot indigenous way of looking at it, adherents favor the psychological warfare model popularized by Ishayot, right?
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_04: He advanced a compelling narrative that these resonators or whistles were deployed en masse as war whistles, right?
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_04: So he's the one that really is the that comes up with this idea of them being the war whistles.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_04: In his performances and lectures, uh Ishayot demonstrated how hundreds of warriors marching together and blowing these skull whistles simultaneously could create a paralyzing wall of sound, simulating the quote unquote wailing of a thousand souls.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, Ishayot.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_04: Come on, man.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_04: Designed to completely shatter the psychological resolve of opposing forces before combat even began.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the the the issue I have with that though is like they would be creating this cacophony of sound that would render you incapable of hearing from your comrades, right?
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like how would you communicate to each other if everything is, you know, even if you're using uh you know, you're using the drums and you're using the conch shells and you're using the the whistles, but uh he's proposing that they were used to ins to strike fear when you know people like John Poe and uh uh Ross Hassig have written that these were more likely used to direct troops, like I had mentioned before.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so that makes more sense to me because uh you know orchestrating this chaos, this cacophony of of noise, this wall of sound as as as he puts it, um doesn't seem like it would be very conducive to well.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, to be fair to Isha Yur, I mean, indigenous people are not immune to sensationalism, right?
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_04: So we've seen a lot of that in the Mishikayu community.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_04: So he's kind of tapping into that.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_04: I I'm thinking he probably had conversations with people uh in ceremonies and things like that, and and uh out of one of those conversations, this came out, right?
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_04: And so he began to popularize it and he's attributed with it.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know if he's the one that originated it, but he's the one that's attributed with sort of starting that idea.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_04: He popularized it for sure.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so that could be that could be it.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_04: But but that's just one point uh about Ishayot that I wasn't aware of.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_04: This one here, Ishayot's masterful craftsmanship and performance ability ultimately transitioned the death whistle out of academic journals and into mainstream media.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_04: So he's responsible for the popularization of the death whistle, right?
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_04: But his handmade instruments caught the attention of Hollywood, most notably providing the raw primordial soundtrack elements for Mel Gibson's 2006 film Apocalypto.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_04: What the hell, man?
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, come on.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's probably the one of the more most accurate parts of that movie.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because I do know that John Paul had a hand in the the design of the weapons.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, really?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so the weapons that are used in that movie are super accurate.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um and also I don't know who he consulted, but in the movie where it shows the people, it's a real brief scene, but as they're being brought into the main city, uh you could see individuals producing Lyme.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um which uh is super accurate.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_03: The way it's shown in the movie is actually really, really accurately depicted.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: So for everything I hate about that movie, there are a couple of things that I look at and I'm like, oh shit, that like that they must have had good consultants for that specific thing.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_04: So would you have consulted if they hadn't asked you for that movie?
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: Not for Mel Gibson, no.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um because that guy.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, fuck that guy.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like I I I do have lines that that I won't cross, and and I'm not working for there's whistles that you won't blow.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_03: There's certain whistles that cannot be blown, my friend.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_03: You can't put the sound back in the whistle.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, that's a good one, man.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_04: I like that.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_04: Through a shot's viral digital demonstration.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_04: Bots analytical validations, the death whistle evolved from an obscure, misclassified archaeological toy into a globally recognized symbol of pre-Columbian acoustic engineering.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_04: Together, their legacies demonstrate that understanding Mesoamerican history requires both the precision of the caliper and the breath of the practitioner.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_04: So it takes two, it takes two, right?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_04: R.I.P.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_04: ra base.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_03: And his boss would say, You don't like me, so what?
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_04: I don't care.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_05: True, true words were oh yeah.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_05: Oh raw face.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_04: So there's a YouTube video also about uh Ishayot and his work that uh someone interviewed him uh to discuss that.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I think we're gonna save this for the premium listeners, but it showcases the artisan discussion uh or his discussion of his personal philosophy regarding indigenous music and demonstrating the distinct sound profiles of his handmade ceremonial eagle and skull whistles.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_04: So that's we're gonna say that for the the premium part of this episode.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_05: For you subscribers.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_05: For you subscribers history.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_04: So don't forget, click and subscribe.
• 1:02:23
  unknown: No?
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_04: Is that how the influencers do it?
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: The influencers.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um smash that like button.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_04: There you go.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_04: There you go.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_04: What follows is a summary of an article that was written by Roberto Velazquez Cabrera that's entitled The Death Whistle.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_04: Just straight to the point.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_04: I like it.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_04: Short and simple.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_04: That's kind of like the title of our episode, The Death Whistle.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_04: Published on the website Mexico Lore in 2011.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_04: And if you haven't visited Mexico Lore, it's a decent site.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's not like academically rigorous, uh, and there might be things uh on that site that you might not really agree with, but by and large, it's it's uh a lot of the stuff that they post is mostly done.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they tap people who are experts in the field, uh, people who have knowledge about uh Aztec culture, Mesoamerican culture.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I even have a couple of pieces in there for those of you that are interested.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_04: All you have to do is type in my name and and you'll get to them.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_04: But this piece uh I found it.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's a great it's a great resource.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_04: Sorry.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_04: And so I found I found this piece uh from from Mr.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_04: Cabrera, who was an engineer, published in 2011.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I believe he's also passed away, so RIP to Roberto Velazquez Cabrera.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_04: So in his article, Cabrera explores the history, structure, acoustic properties, and ritualistic significance of what the resonator, again, the whistle, known as the death whistle.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_04: As he notes, far from a conventional musical instrument, this clay device belongs to an unusual family of ancient Mexican noise generators capable of imitating animal calls and environmental sound like roaring winds or storms.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_04: By analyzing archaeological context, historical texts, and modern acoustic models, Cabrera sought to uncover the lost purposes of these instruments, detailing how they connected ancient Mexican mythology to modern sound experimentation.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_04: According to his research, the death whistle's physical design and archaeological provenance establish its clear ties to Aztic concepts of death sacrifice and the environment.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_04: So at least he went one further.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_04: He added the environment part to it.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know how that ties into it, but okay.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_04: Cabrera highlights that the instrument's identity is directly informed by its visual iconography, often featuring, as we've stated already, carved faces of skulls and owls, and its discovery at sacred sites, namely the Tlatelolco site.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_04: The most vital physical evidence linking these whistles to ancient rituals comes from those excavations at Tlatelololco, and Cabrera provides the historical context of this discovery thusly.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_03: The only known ancient death whistles with archaeological context were published by Salvador Guilem Arroyo in 1999.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_03: They were recovered from the hands of the skeleton of a sacrificed twenty-year-old man that was found buried in front of the Ehekatl or Wind Temple of Tlatalolco.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_03: This finding indicates that the whistles are associated with Ehekatl or the Wind and Miklan Tagutli, death, and that they could be related to the ritual of sacrifice.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_04: So over and over again, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, right?
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_03: Which is interesting because You look at okay, so it's a body.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's definitely somebody died.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_03: There was a killing, but you're attributing this intent of how they died and what was intended by the people who killed them, you know, that their head was removed.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, was it removed when they were killed or was it removed post-mortem as part of some sort of ritual, you know, funerary ceremony?
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you look at like the Buddhist, what do they call it, the sky burials, where they take the the bodies up to the mountains and they leave them there to be eaten by birds, and then they'll come up and they'll like disarticulate the bones afterwards.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um but nobody looks at that is like, oh yeah, this is evidence of the sacrifice.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_04: Is that something that the Meshika were known to do?
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_04: That that would be a new one on me if if they practiced that.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm just saying, like, in terms of you know, after you die, what was done with the body?
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_03: Could it have been possible that the head was removed right after the person died as part of some sort of ritual?
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_03: True.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_03: Just throwing that out there.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, of course.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_04: Because a natural storm could not be summoned on command during rigid religious schedules, these whistles likely served a practical symbolic role.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_04: And this is again according to Cabrera.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_04: They allowed priests to artificially simulate the presence of the deities during critical ceremonies.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_04: While exact records of the whistle's function are scarce, Cabrera points to surviving colonial era and historical literature to reconstruct how the instruments were deployed.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_04: He connects the eerie, again, his words, not mine, wind like noise of the resonator to the Mesoamerican deity Tescatlipoca, utilizing early 20th century scholarship to illustrate its atmospheric role during the festival of Toshkat.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_03: The most remarkable festival in connection with Tescatlipoca was the Toshkat, held in the fifth month.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_03: On the day of this festival, a youth was slain who for an entire year previously had been carefully instructed in the role of victim.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_03: So this is the Ishiptla, basically, of Tescatlipoca.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_03: He assumed the name, garb, and attributes of Tescatlipoka himself as the earthly representative of the deity.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_03: He carried also the whistle symbolical of the deity as 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.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_03: And this is from Lewis Spence's Myths of Mexico and Peru 1913, pages 69 and 70.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_03: My my only uh part about this is my only criticism here is if you look in the Florentine Codex, there's a lot of description of this specific uh festival, of this feast, and of the Ishipla Fescatlipoca, and they even show representations of the Ishiptla, but the what they're blowing into looks more like a a flute than a whistle.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I wonder if maybe there was some sort of misinterpretation or Probably you know.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_04: Because I mean Tescatlipoca and the Hecat and the Pantheon of Astic, uh that they all are in a sense kind of the same but different manifestations of the same, right?
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_04: So there I mean that confusion could be uh because of that, the notion of them being two two representations of the same entity.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_04: So they're they're being transposed here by Cabrera.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_04: I mean that could be the case, the case as well.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_04: So Cabrera further cross-references the Florentine Codex to suggest that the whistle may have functioned as a cue during merchant banquets involving human sacrifice.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_04: He notes that the Aztec term chichtli referred to an instrument making a chich sound, which served as a signal to initiate specific sacrificial procedures.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_04: Given this connection to the Teot or deity, Cabrera proposes the honorific name Eheka Chichtli for the device.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_04: So he's kind of vacillating between ehekat and tlaloc here, right?
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_04: Or satlipoka, I should say, not llalok, we keep bringing up Laloc.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_04: All praise be to Tlaloc.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_04: Tlaloc provides, baby.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_04: Ehka Chichtli.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_03: So this is a name that he created.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_04: He came up with it, yeah.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_04: So I don't know, I guess uh marinate on that for now.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_04: According to Cabrera's technical analysis, the internal mechanics of the death whistle are so remarkably complex that they defy computerized mathematical simulations.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_04: By studying a surviving post-classic ceramic fragment from the Masatepet site, he was able to map uh the sound frequencies of the instrument, noting that they perfectly target the human ear's peak range of hearing sensitivity between 1 kHz and 6 kHz.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_04: To test these acoustic hypotheses without endangering fragile museum artifacts, Cabrera crafted several experimental replicas.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_04: His experiments revealed that the whistles possess unique acoustic properties, particularly when played in unison.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_04: So again, back to the idea of playing them together, right?
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_03: When two or more similar ancient whistles or their models are played at the same time, special effects can be produced due to the vibrations generated, or phantom sounds.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_03: If the beats are infrasonic, too low for the human ear to detect, they may alter states of consciousness.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Several death whistles played at the same time can generate very complex vibrations because their noisy signals are produced in a range of frequencies and the effects on humans is significant.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Does he say what these effects are?
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_04: Ultimately, Cabrera's paper demonstrates that while the original exact and intent behind the Mexican death whistle have been largely obscured by time, modern replication and acoustic analysis offer vital clues.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_04: Whether used to alter consciousness through infrasonic frequencies, I don't know.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm having a hard time with that.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, signal steps in human sacrifice or mimic the roar of nightmare storm for a hiccup.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_04: The so-called death whistle remains a masterclass in ancient engineering.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_04: Again, according to Cabrera.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_04: Today, these haunting Mesoamerican soundscapes continue to live on finding new utility as contemporary musicians create custom notation systems to integrate these complex primordial sounds into modern compositions.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_04: And this is the end of Cabrera's summary, the article, and it's also basically all I have.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but there's a lot there to chew on, man.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then also when you look at the modern manifestations of these quote unquote Aztec death whistles, right?
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_03: They're they really play up the macabre macabre?
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_03: I've never known how to pronounce that word.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_03: Macabre imagery, right?
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um they're meant to look horrifying and scary, and they're way bigger than the ones that were found archaeologically.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the new ones that people are making and selling to tourists even produce different sounds.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like really, I think they're they're altering the sound of that these whistles produce to be more terrifying, quote unquote.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_03: To actually to play that up, yeah, instead of just being, you know, something that sounds like the wind, which is what the you know, the actual whistles.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's too basic, Curly.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_04: Come on, yeah, wind.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_03: Come on, give me a break, right?
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_03: Not sexy, right?
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's gotta be agonizing.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then reading those uh the comments from to that video, those those people.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um, it's just so funny how they're like totally befuddled.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, how could anybody hear that and think it's soothing?
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it makes me wonder you know, how disconnected from nature.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's like fucking go outside, man.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_04: Get off the interweb.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, get off the couch, stop being off a plane, whatever latest uh stupid video game you're playing.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, or just being on Reddit like most of your habitually.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_03: That shit's crazy.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_03: But that that was a good uh that was a good episode, man.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'd I'd wondered about uh the whistle, and uh you answered a lot of the questions that I had um going into it.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_04: In a kind of roundabout way, we we kind of meandered through it, but hopefully our listeners can uh get the main points.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_04: But what what do you make of this this whole idea of um back to Cabrera?
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_04: He he's kind of throwing me for a loop.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh consciousness, uh alteration of consciousness through infrasonic frequencies, right?
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_04: Like that's one of the things that he kind of came up with.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so if you play if you play them in unison in a certain like it's gonna affect you, like I don't know, it's almost it kind of it's reminiscent of like the whole Havana syndrome nonsense, right?
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_04: That people are are saying that they've they've experienced uh some kind of sensation and it's making them feel a certain way, and it's gotta be some weird instrument that has been developed that is targeting infrasonic uh senses in my body, right?
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_04: But in this sense, it's it's it's supposed to be for the the use of of good, right, to make you feel good about yourself as you're dying, as you're being sacrificed.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, is that the implication here?
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I want to read his paper.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_03: Was his paper in in English or in Spanish?
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, uh it's in English, yeah.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so I I want to go through and read his paper because I'm curious.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know exactly what he's talking about because he he talks about how these you know cause um that the uh the effects on humans is significant.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_03: So one, I'm like, how do you measure that?
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what's a significant effect on a human?
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_03: How did you measure that?
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_03: What did you mean by that?
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Did you do experiments to to with people and and have them record their reactions to it?
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_03: Were they hooked up to sensors on their brains to see how the the sound patterns were affecting their their cognition?
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like what are you getting at here exactly?
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because yes, on a very basic level, we've all experienced it.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_03: Certain sounds elicit certain responses, like certain songs get you hyped up.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Certain noises are very irritating.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm thinking of like when you scratch your fingernails on a scru on a on a chalkboard, right?
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody hates that sound.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_03: I just went to the dentist and they were using like this hypersonic water pick on my T.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's soothing to me.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_04: I get it.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_05: I get it.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_03: Are there even uh chalkboards anymore in classrooms?
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_04: No, it's all whiteboards with markers.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_03: Smart boards too, right?
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_03: They have those smart screens.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_04: They do.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think I've seen one.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_04: I've seen the clear ones.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_04: They they give us um a uh a class on that case, but they're not in every classroom.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_04: Like if you want to use it, you have to go to that specific room and reserve time and make a video.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_04: This is too much hassle.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_04: Like, forget it.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_03: I miss the old uh the carriage uh projectors with the slides.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_04: I have one of those.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_04: I have one of those projectors with with the with the clear slides where you put it on on the on the the tabletop and you light it up, the transparency.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, transparency, thank you.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_04: I have one of those.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_04: I haven't used it in ages, but I still have I still have one of those.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to know what this guy, so I yeah, that's my homework, my self-appointed homework.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna read this guy's paper and see what he's talking about.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_03: Because I want to know to what extent he went to determine the effects that this sound had on people.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_03: Because sound does affect us in certain ways, but you know, like I sometimes I relate it to sitting in uh in uh uh medicine ceremony, right?
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_03: Where you start the the drum, the water drum and the rattle and the singing, it all coalesces and it creates a very distinct feeling, uh sensory experience that you're having there.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I wonder if he's talking about that or if it's going like way out into left field, like like a trance state?
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to know what he means by that.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's kind of I mean that that he said it's not that very long, the the article he did for Mexico Lore.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_04: So it I think it would be interesting to see, like first, if he published anything else on the topic and that it was published somewhere uh like some journal of some sort, or or if there's like if you really wanted to like get to the like the sources that he used and the methods, like if there's an archive somewhere of his stuff, I doubt it, but like you'd probably have to dig into his personal archives to to get a sense of like what the sources and methods that he used for.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, because you said he'd pass away, right?
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he's passed away.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, so archives and he was I think he lived in Mexico, so you'd have to travel to Mexico, and so that's a good one.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_04: That's a good one.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm just after the truth here, my friend.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know what they say about the truth.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_03: Truth the truth is like an Aztec death whistle.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-oh.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't always sound good, but it's always good for you.
• 1:21:15
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• 1:21:44
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• 1:21:54
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• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_03: If you've ever wanted to experience the ancient Maya world for yourself, well, I have an incredible opportunity for you because Tales from Ostlantis is teaming up with the fine folks at the Skeptoid Podcast to bring you the mysteries of the Maya Adventure.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_03: This December, I will be joining Skeptoid Adventures as your guide for the mysteries of the Maya.
• 1:22:21
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to travel through the Yucatan, exploring remarkable archaeological sites, uncovering the real history behind the Maya civilization, and separating fact from fiction along the way.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_03: Together, we'll examine the archaeology, history, and culture of one of the world's greatest civilizations through the lens of evidence, not sensationalism.
• 1:22:46
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• 1:22:52
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• 1:22:58
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• 1:23:02
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• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're feeling extra adventurous, you can combine the Maya Adventure with the New Orleans Escapade and receive$500 off when you reserve both trips.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_03: Just visit Skeptoid.comslash adventures to learn more and reserve your spot.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_03: I hope that you will join me this December as we explore the mysteries of the Maya together.