[HN Gopher] Ancient soldiers used sound to frighten and confuse ...
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       Ancient soldiers used sound to frighten and confuse their enemies
       (2022)
        
       Author : tintinnabula
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2023-04-03 04:42 UTC (18 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
        
       | cronix wrote:
       | Kind of like the Stuka Siren/Scream[1] sound combined with the
       | doppler effect the German planes used in WW2 to make that wailing
       | sound that increased in frequency as they dive bombed. That sound
       | carried quite a distance and instilled fear in anyone who heard
       | it, which affected more people than those that were bombed. The
       | Tie Fighters in Star Wars used a similar sound.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhJ8HY24Pb8
        
       | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
       | Another example is Gideon from the Bible where they smashed a
       | bunch of jars and blew trumpets in the middle of the night which
       | caused the enemy to think they were being attacked by a large
       | army and caused them to fight each other.
        
       | viraptor wrote:
       | Another one to add to that collection:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_hussars Polish heavy cavalry
       | with wings making loud buzzing noise during charge.
        
         | bitsinthesky wrote:
         | Do you have an example handy of the sound they'd make, maybe a
         | youtube video? Sounds interesting.
        
       | twic wrote:
       | There's a bit in Xenophon's Anabasis (1.8.18) where the armies of
       | two contenders for the throne of the Persian Empire, Cyrus and
       | Artaxerxes, meet in battle. Cyrus's army has a contingent of
       | Greek mercenaries, including Xenophon, who gives the Greek view
       | of the battle in some detail. The armies draw up into lines and
       | slowly advance towards each other, until suddenly the Greeks
       | charge:
       | 
       | kai ama ephthegxanto pantes oion to Enualio elelizousi
       | 
       | and at the same time they all uttered the cry as for the Warlike
       | One [ie Ares, god of war]
       | 
       | kai pantes de etheon
       | 
       | and all flew forward
       | 
       | legousi de tines os kai tais aspisi pros ta dorata edoupesan
       | 
       | they say that some loudly beat their shields with their spears
       | 
       | phobon poiountes tois ippois
       | 
       | sowing fear among the horses
       | 
       | (the Greek is Xenophon's [1], the English my crummy translation)
       | 
       | So, screaming and drumming to scare the enemy and his horses!
       | 
       | The reason i remember this bit about thirty years later is that
       | the word for a war-cry here is "elelizousi", "elelizousi". My
       | teacher suggested that this was onomatopoeic, because the cry
       | itself was "ELELELELELELE...", which would be pretty easy to make
       | as you were running towards an enemy, and would be pretty
       | upsetting to hear, coming from thousands of armoured Greeks. As
       | sort of evidence for that, the same word also means "to whirl
       | round" [2], and you can imagine that whirling an object round on
       | a string (as with a sling) would also make the same sort of
       | sound. Wiktionary reckons it's from some proto-Indo-European
       | root, but what do they know, they've probably never charged
       | anyone in their lives, the nerds.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=e%29leli%2Fzous...
        
       | UI_at_80x24 wrote:
       | My personal favorite item related to this is various peoples that
       | used slings would carve lead/stone ammo to make a high-pitch
       | whistle as the bullets flew through the air.
        
       | analog31 wrote:
       | No mention of the bagpipes.
        
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