Over the many, many years we’ve been rolling around on this rock we’ve come up with some truly devilish ways to kill each other.

Tallying up the evidence of human history you might come away with the impression that humans are not very nice to each other.

If ever you wanted proof of that then you need look no further than the ‘worst way to die’, an Ancient Greek contraption made for torture and execution known as the Brazen Bull.

Basically, it’s a big bronze statue of a bull that’s hollow on the inside and has a trapdoor that a human could fit through.

You insert the person you don’t like into the bull and lock them inside, then light a fire underneath the statue and cook them to death.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the guy who invented this thing stuck some pipes into the statue so that the victim’s screams would come out sounding like animal noises.

The bloke who came up with this was one Perilaus of Athens, who invented the Brazen Bull in the 6th Century BC.

For some reason he decided to invent a device to hurt and kill people in a horribly painful way, then decided he knew just the guy who might like to buy the Brazen Bull.

That’s right, nobody commissioned Perilaus to make this thing, he just made it and took it to Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian state of Akragas.

According to some historical records, Phalaris was a cannibal who ate newborn babies so he was either a terrible person or so terribly hated that his enemies made up those sorts of stories about him.

Anyhow, in more recent times a simulation of what being put inside the Brazen Bull would be like and it’s horribly gruesome.

The victim would be cooked alive by the fire while those outside listened to your screams transformed by the pipes in the contraption.

However, back in the 6th century BC where they didn’t have the Discovery Channel in those times, Phalaris decided to conduct his own simulation and decided that the Brazen Bull needed some testing.

As you screamed the pipes would turn your wails of agony into other sounds. (Discovery)

So he put Perilaus in it and lit a fire underneath to cook the man inside his own invention.

Having demonstrated that the occupant would be roasted in terrible agony and the Brazen Bull worked the tyrant removed the inventor from his own creation before he died, then decided it would be execution for Perilaus after all as he was thrown off a hill.

Phalaris very much enjoyed killing people with his new toy, with the sight of it rocking back and forth as the occupant was cooked in side supposedly amusing him.

However, when he was overthrown in 554 BC those who defeated him decided they knew exactly what to do with the tyrant and decided it was his turn to go inside the Brazen Bull.

When you create a monster. you must always be aware that you might fall prey to it yourself, which is what the inventor of ‘the most painful torture device’ in history discovered.

Over the years people have come up with some horrifyingly inventive ways to hurt each other, with scientists even working which of the especially nasty things that could happen to you were the worst.

However, one of the worst and most painful fates you could meet was to end up inside the Brazen Bull, a torture device from Ancient Greece which was created in around the 6th Century BC.

In essence it was a hollow bronze statue of a bull with pipes in the nose and a trapdoor in the belly so people could be put inside.

Once someone was inside a fire could be lit beneath the bull, essentially cooking the unfortunate occupant while the sound of their screams was turned into bull noises by the pipes.

F**king horrible, frankly, and the purported creator of this device was one Perilaus of Athens, who you’ll know doesn’t come out of this story too well since you’ve seen the headline.

He made the Brazen Bull for Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian state of Akragas, but some accounts say that nobody ever actually asked Perilaus to create this horrific torture device.

Instead he brought it to Phalaris and correctly judged that a sculpture of a bull which humans could be cooked in was exactly the sort of thing a cruel tyrant would like to have.

Some accounts of the Sicilian tyrant even claim he was a cannibal who ate babies, though that may have been a lie invented by his enemies.

Still, you’ve got to wonder about the type of guy someone would accuse of eating babies and seemed very pleased to receive the Brazen Bull.

While he was inventive enough to create the Brazen Bull, Perilaus was clearly lacking in some aspects of the brains department.

When he presented the torture device to Phalaris he was asked to get inside and demonstrate how the noises would sound for everyone else.

Wikimedia Commons

If you ever bring a tyrant a torture device and they say ‘get inside and show me how it works’, that’s usually a sign that it’s time to skedaddle, but Perilaus climbed inside anyway.

Living up to his reputation as a monumental a**ehole, Phalaris then had the inventor locked inside his own creation and lit a fire underneath it to cook the man alive, though he didn’t die inside it.

Once he’d been given a painful demonstration of how the torture device would work the tyrant then had the inventor hauled out of the Brazen Bull.

If Perilaus had any idea that he was being pulled to safety then he was sorely mistaken as the tyrant then had him executed by being thrown off a hill.

Wikimedia Commons

However, the inventor might have had the last laugh (at least in spirit) as the Brazen Bull became the tyrant’s favourite toy right up until his reign came to an end in 554 BC.

Phalaris enjoyed the spectacle of the bull rocking back and forth as one of his enemies was cooked alive inside it, and he had their bones made into jewellery afterwards.

The torture device could take up to 10 minutes to kill someone who was being roasted alive inside, as the tyrant discovered when he was overthrown by a guy called Telemachus.

He had Phalaris thrown inside the Brazen Bull and the tyrant was killed by his own torture device.

The Brazen Bull was later seized by the Carthaginians before being nabbed by the Romans centuries later, and there are accounts of Roman emperors using the bull to kill Christians.

If you somehow managed to find yourself imprisoned within the Brazen Bull, one of the worst torture devices in history, you’d be having a very bad time.

In case you don’t know the history, the Brazen Bull was created by ancient Greek inventor Perilaus of Athens in the 6th Century BCE, who decided that a tyrant named Phalaris would absolutely love this thing.

The idea behind the Brazen Bull was that you shoved someone inside and lit a fire under them, cooking them alive while their screams were turned into noises by a series of pipes in the bronze sculpture’s mouth.

Given his reputation as a tyrant who ate babies, you can only imagine how much Phalaris loved the Brazen Bull, and he decided that the first person to go inside should be the man who made it.

The tyrant told Perilaus to get inside and demonstrate how the mouth pipes worked, only to lock him in and light a fire under the bull.

Fortunately for Perilaus, he was taken out of his own invention before he died in there.

Unfortunately for Perilaus, he was then taken to the top of a hill and thrown off to his death, so it’s safe to say he really didn’t have a good day there.

Phalaris was a massive fan of his new toy right up until he was overthrown in 554 BC and it was decided that it was his turn to have a go in the Brazen Bull.

As for what that would do to you, experts say the first thing which would happen is that you’d panic like hell at being locked inside a giant bronze bull sculpture with a fire lit underneath you.

That’s pretty understandable all things considered, and next your screams of panic would be turned into bull noises by the pipes in the sculptures mouth, presumably for the amusement of people like Phalaris.

Man goes in, screams come out. Within 10 minutes of this you’d be burned, cooked and dead. (Discovery)

Unless of course you were Phalaris himself, at which point you might like to reflect on the poetic justice of killing people inside this horrible thing only to end up there yourself.

Since you’d be trapped in a prison of heated metal it’d be excruciatingly painful, and you’d suffer horrible burns all over your body as there’d be no escape from it.

While the outside of your skin would become horribly burned, on the inside your body would start to be cooked by the heat.

You’d suffer from heat exhaustion, which would then render you unconscious, and after about 10 minutes you would be very, very dead.

We told you this was one of the most horrific things ever invented, this wasn’t going to end very nicely now was it?

Experts decided that one of the most terrifying noises ever heard by a human needed replicating – even if it sounds like the ‘scream of a thousand corpses’.

Those zany brainiacs just can’t help themselves, they hear an utterly terrifying noise and decide that it must be replicated and studied, even if it is genuinely scary.

The noise is produced by something called the Aztec Death Whistle, which was found in 1999, when archaeologists discovered the remains of a sacrificial victim holding a number of musical instruments.

One of these was a skull shaped whistle, which produced a sound like howling wind when it was tested.

Since the skeleton was discovered inside a temple dedicated to the Aztec god Ehecatl, who is associated with the wind, it’s thought that the original death whistle was meant to invoke this force of nature through sound.

However, when a team of experts 3D printed a replica of the whistle, they found that it produced a much more unsettling sound.

It either sounded like the most howling wind in the world, but give it a listen in the video below and tell me that doesn’t sound like some poor soul screaming in their last moments.

It’s genuinely quite an unsettling sound which really does sound like someone screaming in utter terror, and the fear factor is only heightened by the fact that it was discovered clutched in the hands of a sacrificial victim.

The Aztecs were already a rather scary civilisation, what with their penchant for human sacrifice, so even if the original artefact was supposed to sound like the wind, it’s little surprise the recreation of the instrument was named the ‘death whistle’.

What the Aztecs themselves used it for is unknown, but the fact that it was buried with a sacrificial victim may help shine a light on it.

It’s like a whistle, only exceptionally terrifying. (Tanner Pearson/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

There are also other suggestions that Aztec soldiers would blow their whistles in unison for intimidation, but an instrument that would have sounded like the wind being buried with a sacrificial victim in a temple dedicated to the Aztec’s god of wind has more meat on the bones as a theory.

As for what the recreation sounds like, YouTuber James Orgill played the sounds and it really did evoke the noise of someone screaming, so if you’re going to watch make sure you do it somewhere with headphones.

You have been warned:

The Aztec Death Whistle’s recreated sound, which is so much more like someone screaming, has been used to scare people away from time to time.

Footage of a man and his dog responding to the screaming noise was picked up by a doorbell camera, causing them to run off.

The wonders of modern technology clashing with historical scary noises.