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The Why Files: Operation Podcast

Aztec Death Whistle | The Scariest Sound You've Ever Heard

The Why Files: Operation Podcast

The Why Files

Documentary, Science Fiction, Life Sciences, Science, Society & Culture, Fiction

4.89.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Aztec Death Whistle. If hell has a sound, I bet it sounds alot like the Aztec Death Whistle. The Aztec Death Whistle sounds like a shriek of death mixed with howling wind. It's so unnerving, that the significance of the horrifying sound of the Aztec Death Whistle has fascinated and perplexed scholars for years.  I'm going to play the sound of the Aztec Death Whistle for you today.   When Spanish conquistador Cortés and his men arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521, they described witnessing a gruesome ceremony. Aztec priests, using razor-sharp obsidian blades, sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still-beating hearts to the gods. They then tossed the victims' lifeless bodies down the steps of the Great Temple known as Templo Mayor; in Mexico City.   Andrés de Tapia, also a conquistador, described two rounded towers flanking the Templo Mayor made entirely of human skulls. And between them, a *huge* wooden rack displaying thousands more skulls with holes bored through either side to allow them to slide onto the wooden poles.   Reading these accounts hundreds of years later, many historians dismissed the 16th-century reports as wildly exaggerated.   *But* over just the past few years, archeologists working at the Templo Mayor excavation site discovered *proof* of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs. And the proof was *none other* than the very skull towers and skull racks that the conquistadors had described centuries ago.   The Aztec Death Whistle has been described as sounding like humans howling in pain, or as one researcher said, the 'scream of a thousand corpses'.   Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's your buddy, AJ, from the White Files.

0:02.3

You can't handle this.

0:03.3

Right.

0:04.3

And hecklefish.

0:05.3

We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy.

0:08.7

You have to be easy for humans to understand it.

0:11.0

We've stopped that.

0:12.0

I'm just saying.

0:13.0

Spotify for podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer.

0:17.0

I don't have a computer.

0:18.0

Oh, do you have a phone?

0:19.5

Of course I have a phone.

0:20.5

I'm not a savage.

0:21.5

Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone too.

0:25.3

Spotify makes it easy to distribute your podcast to every platform and you can even earn

0:29.4

money.

0:29.9

I do need money.

0:30.9

What do you need money for?

0:31.9

Your kid and I'm getting killed on guppy support payments.

0:34.9

These three X wives are expensive.

0:37.4

You don't want to support your kids?

0:38.4

What are you, my wife's lawyer now?

...

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