The Aztecs used skull whistles in ritual human sacrifice ceremonies. The shrill sound of these pre-Columbian instruments also has a frightening effect on modern humans, according to a neuroscience study from the University of Zurich (UZH).
To understand the physical mechanisms behind this shrill and screaming whistle, the team led by Sascha Frühholz, professor of cognitive and affective neuroscience at UZH, created 3D digital reconstructions of Aztec skull whistles from the Berlin Ethnological Museum.
These models show a unique internal construction with two opposing acoustic chambers that produce air turbulence and the characteristic shrill sound: “We know of no comparable musical instrument in pre-Columbian cultures or in other historical and contemporary contexts,” says Professor Frühholz, quoted Tuesday in a UZH press release.
The whistles symbolized visual and sound elements of mythological beings from the Aztec underworld Mictlan. The sound produced was probably used to prepare the victims of human sacrifices to go down there…
>> The first sound comes from an original whistle, the others from 3D replicas:
A human cry to be mistaken
The scientists played sound recordings of these whistles to various people while measuring their brain activity. In addition to reactions in regions of the affective nervous system, activities in regions of the brain that associate sounds with symbolic meaning have been noted.
This indicates that the sounds of the death whistle trigger in people who listen to it both a psychoaffective reaction and a mental processing of the sound symbolism, according to these works published in the journal Communications Psychology.
Subjectively, the sons were perceived by those who listened to it as extremely frightening, as a real human cry, thinking that they could have a natural and organic origin.
ats/sjaq
Swiss
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