There is so much wrong with this article that it's hard to know where to start. First off, Cronan, I absolutely agree with what you wrote in your second paragraph. Who are these auditory experts and scientists, anyway? (Surely, some kind of Indiana Jonesian "top. men." that they'll never identify.)

I'll add, though, that although there's no evidence provided to indicate what the Aztecs might have called these whistles, from now on they will be known as "Whistles of Death" because that's what Velazquez seems to have decided they should be called. The circulation of this article will certainly help that. (In this case it might be good that ancient cultures tend to be deaf and mute.)

Further, the notion that "sounds still play an important role in Mexican society" can be said of every society (ice cream truck music, anyone? Car alarms, sirens, steamed peanut boilers in some places, etc). That, and the bit on sounds seems to have no real bearing on the rest of the piece.

And what does it mean to "discover" an instrument's inner croak? If ancient cultures are mute as we know them to be, once you've discovered a croak, how does one know that you have the right one?

On a more mundane level, the provided collage of of so-called "noisemakers" (another somewhat problematic construction, one might argue) is misleading. Not only do they not tell you which instruments you're hearing (is the so-called Whistle of Death EVER played), they also do it identify which of the whistles you're hearing are original and which are replicas. That seems to me to be a rather important distinction.

ps. Slayer rules.

I have one of these and love it! I put a sound sample up on our blog (back when we were running the "Anti iPhone Contest" contest) which gives a different sense of the toy's capabilities. If anyone out there wants a better sense of what the cup kit sounds like, you can check it out here:

http://arcmusic.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/anti-iphone-contest-all-systems-go/