Ancient soldiers used sound to frighten and confuse their enemies (2022)
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Where basically you create suppressive fear over a large area but even if you hear it you rarely have any reasonable reaction time to do anything about it if it hits near you (unless you have a foxhole). But it still scares the shit out of everyone nearby?
Or is this just merely a side effect of the munition traveling through the air at high speeds?
From the shooter’s perspective it would be much easier to cause mass casualties with everyone standing up instead of hugging the contours of the ground. Zero warning is the goal.
Better be safe than sorry; with only two seconds of advance warning you don't want to take the risk / be smug about it. Plus, shockwaves and shrapnel can travel far.
καὶ ἅμα ἐφθέγξαντο πάντες οἷον τῷ Ἐνυαλίῳ ἐλελίζουσι
and at the same time they all uttered the cry as for the Warlike One [ie Ares, god of war]
καὶ πάντες δὲ ἔθεον
and all flew forward
λέγουσι δέ τινες ὡς καὶ ταῖς ἀσπίσι πρὸς τὰ δόρατα ἐδούπησαν
they say that some loudly beat their shields with their spears
φόβον ποιοῦντες τοῖς ἵπποις
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 "ἐλελίζουσι", "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...
I thought the same thing (also been a long time), but looks like this is actually the present participle of ἐλελίζω.
nice tool if you're not already aware: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=elelizousi&la=g...
Another fun bit of that section- the Landmark Anabasis leaves “Enyalios” in place, with a note that this is a war god often identified with Ares, but with a distinct cult.
None of the sources seem to be Asian or African, where surely they fought far, far more elephants than the Romans. And I can't find any modern confirmation of it.
It seems like the noise could have been replicated with some kind of trumpet, and we'd have a long legacy of those being used against elephants.
Elephants have been used in warfare for centuries in South/South-East Asia and i can find not a single account of pigs/noise being used to rout them. Even their Elephant training manuals do not mention them.
Then again, we still don't really know exactly how they were constructed / mounted, so any replica is a bit of a guess.
(He also told us to not shout after the action stopped, as is common in a lot of fencing, but that didn't always work out so well)
Screaming does help with:
* Raw power (which is largely not a factor for fencing or aikido). Weight lifting, tennis, javelin throwing, etc. Shouting during the action gets really common.
* Coordinating with other people (not a thing for one on one, but team fights, yea. E.g. if you've ever watched player comms for high level eSports, it can get really spammy when coordinating attacks on a specific target)
* Mental intimidation. Either of the other competitor, or, as it looks like in fencing, the ref lol
Some notes:
* That's mostly national team people in the video
* All of the yelling is after the action stops
* As you'll see, the primary reasons stated are to mess with the opponent's head, and the ref. And then stress relief, yea. You'll do other things like, uh... stabbing your own foot... for that purpose as well. (Sounds bad to say out loud but it doesn't hurt)
Akido (and kendo too) are a lot more stylized. Some yelling in there is for the same reasons, but a lot of it has been passed down in some almost mystical level. It's not a hyper optimized/gamified sport that cares only about results, so you get a lot more style points type things happening in aikido/kendo/etc.
gamified - as an example, there was a period of time from like late 90s to early 00s where foil fencing became dominated by an offensive strategy that involved literally bending the blade and hitting your opponent's back. It got so ridiculous that they messed with the weight/timing on the electronic equipment so it didn't work as well. And in the later 00s people started using plastic chest protectors because with the new timing, you'd get some attacks literally bouncing off your chest protector and not registering. Just kinda a ridiculous results-only-everything-else-be-damned situation lol.
See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35437249
The "Kiai" is a staple of Japanese Martial Arts and is not easy to Master; you have to get the Timing and Source right else it is just a shout from the throat instead of a energy inducing sharp exhale with sound from the belly. It is also the case that in Japanese Martial Arts it is more stylized and loud than is necessary; a simple grunt/shout (as is found in Chinese/Other Martial Arts) with the correct Timing and from the correct Source is more than enough.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiai
2) https://kojutsukan.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-science-behind-k...
https://youtu.be/510BzHX9qa4?t=17
in terms of "inspired by", "independent co-evolution", or "nothing in common"
(of course, the timing of the audio/video might be different)
I remember watching these games when i was young and the comments/controversy around "Grunting in Tennis". I was already doing martial arts then and hence knew the basis but apparently many thought it was just "Gamesmanship"; there is even a Wikipedia page on it : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunting_in_tennis
I often think I should write an app for my iPhone that synthesizes "broom broom" noises based on GPS-derived speed information.
But then I realized all I really need is a low-tech whistle on my helmet, or bells on the handlebars to jingle the pedestrians out of their comatose state in time to avoid collision ..
Looking out for slower and weaker users is always the responsibility of the faster and more powerful.
Pedestrians are the most vulnerable... In a city, should never have to pay attention. But we are not there yet and most pedestrians are surprised when this cyclist stops to let them cross !
I absolutely agree, this is why I'm extra careful. But I do believe that the same circumstances came about when we went from horse and buggy to automobile .. and that eventually, peoples' own survival instincts will kick in and they'll just be more alert.
Key thing is to avoid becoming part of the problem ..
In the old religion of Turks (shamanism), the shaman played a frame drum close to its ear and induced a trance on himself. In contrast to other shamanistic cultures (for example native americans), Turkish shamans did not use any plants to induce such altered states but relied on music.
Actually there's heaps of examples; in the modern day there's the flashbang, although it doesn't seem like modern day armies use much intimidation tactics anymore other than e.g. Shock & Awe, but that's actual destruction instead of just intimidation, similar to the Blitzkrieg.