Recreating the sound of Aztec 'Whistles of Death'

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly
find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay,
skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand.

But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years. When someone
finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle.

If death had a sound, this was it.

Roberto Velazquez believes the Aztecs played this mournful wail from
the so-called Whistles of Death before they were sacrificed to the gods.

The 66-year-old mechanical engineer has devoted his career to
recreating the sounds of his pre-Columbian ancestors, producing
hundreds of replicas of whistles, flutes and wind instruments
unearthed in Mexico's ruins.

For years, many archaeologists who uncovered ancient noisemakers
dismissed them as toys. Museums relegated them to warehouses. But
while most studies and exhibits of ancient cultures focus on how they
looked, Velazquez said the noisemakers provide a rare glimpse into how
they sounded. We've been looking at our ancient culture as if they
were deaf and mute," he said. "But I think all of this is tied closely
to what they did, how they thought."

Velazquez is part of a growing field of study that includes
archaeologists, musicians and historians. Medical doctors are
interested too, believing the Aztecs may have used sound to treat
illnesses.

Noisemakers made of clay, turkey feathers, sugar cane, frog skins and
other natural materials were an integral part of pre-Columbian life,
found at nearly every Mayan site.

The Aztecs sounded the low, foghorn hum of conch shells at the start
of ceremonies and possibly during wars to communicate strategies.
Hunters likely used animal-shaped ocarinas to produce throaty grunts
that lured deer.

The modern-day archaeologists who came up with the term Whistles of
Death believe they were meant to help the deceased journey into the
underworld, while tribes are said to have emitted terrifying sounds to
fend off enemies, much like high-tech crowd-control devices available
today.

Experts also believe pre-Columbian tribes used some of the instruments
to send the human brain into a dream state and treat certain
illnesses. The ancient whistles could guide research into how rhythmic
sounds alter heart rates and states of consciousness.

Among Velazquez's replicas are those that emit a strange cacophony so
strong that their frequency nears the maximum range of human hearing.

Chronicles by Spanish priests from the 1500s described the Aztec and
Mayan sounds as sad and doleful, although these may have been only
what was played in their presence.

"My experience is that at least some pre-Hispanic sounds are more
destructive than positive, others are highly trance-evocative," said
Arnd Adje Both, an expert in pre-Hispanic music archaeology who was
the first to blow the Whistles of Death found in the Aztec skeleton's
hands. "Surely, sounds were used in all kind of cults, such as
sacrificial ones, but also in healing ceremonies."

Sounds still play an important role in Mexican society. A cow bell
announces the arrival of the garbage truck outside Mexico City homes.
A trilling, tuneless flute heralds the knife sharpener's arrival. A
whistle emitting cat meows says the lottery ticket seller is here.

But pre-Columbian instruments often end up in a warehouse, Velazquez
said, "and I'm talking about museums around the world doing this, not
just here."

That's changing, said Tomas Barrientos, director of the archaeology
department at Del Valle University of Guatemala.

"Ten years ago, nothing was known about this," he said. "But with the
opening up of museum collections and people's private collections,
it's an area of research that is growing in importance."

Velazquez meticulously researches each noisemaker before replicating
it. He travels across Mexico to examine newly unearthed wind
instruments, some dating back to 400 B.C. and shaped like animals or
deities. He studies reliefs and scans 500-year-old Spanish chronicles.

But making replicas is only part of the work. Then he has to figure
out how to play them. He'll blow into some holes and plug others, or
press the instrument to his lips and flutter his tongue. Sometimes he
puts the noisemaker inside his mouth and blows, fluctuating the air
from his lungs.

He experimented with one frog-shaped whistle for a year before
discovering its inner croak.

Renowned archaeologist Paul Healy, who made an important discovery of
Mayan instruments in Belize in the 1980s, said many of the originals
still work.

"A couple of these instruments we found were broken, which was great
because we could actually see the construction of them, the actual
technology of building a sound chamber out of paper-thin clay," he said.

Still, their exact sounds will likely remain a mystery. "When you blow
into them, you still can get notes from them, so you could figure out
what the range was," Healy said. "But what we don't have is sheet
music to give us a more accurate picture of what it sounded like."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/06/30/pre-columbiansounds.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories#cnnSTCOther1