When the Aztecs dominated central Mexico, a blood-curdling sound like a human scream played through a small whistle. Luis Aceves via Unsplash In cultures around the world, instruments have brought ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. During ritual ceremonies, the ancient Aztec civilization used a “death whistle” — a haunting instrument shaped like a human skull.

As its name suggests, an Aztec death whistle can make a most dreadful sound. But the effect depends on how it's played, explains musicologist and archaeologist Arnd Adje Both of the Free University of ...

Its fear-splitting screech reverberates throughout space and time. Swiss and Norwegian neuroscientists have discovered that the ancient Aztec death whistle — often credited with emitting the scariest ...

In Aztec belief, death was not the end of the journey. Many souls were thought to travel to Mictlan, the vast underworld ...

In cultures around the world, instruments have brought music and joy to rituals, ceremonies and everyday life. But in the forests of central Mexico, a single note from an Aztec whistle didn’t always ...