Beat The Drum, Sound The Bugle, Play The Bagpipe: Music In Warfare
Since prehistoric times when hunters tapped along to the rhythm of drips in caves and carved the first bone flutes and skin drums, music has always been an integral part of the hunt and warfare, where it serves a two-fold function. Not only was different music developed to communicate military commands and strategic frontline messages between distant battalions, but the rumble of drums and the ghostly chants of pipes also served as a very effective tool of psychological warfare.
The oldest musical instrument in the world is a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal hunter’s bone flute that was discovered in Divje babe cave near Cerkno. (Public Domain)
Biblical References To War Music
The earliest written accounts of war music are mostly mythological and allegorical. According to the 2000-book Conquest: Biblical narrative the oldest Biblical reference to music being used as a weapon appears in Joshua 6:1–27 recounting the Battle of Jericho. Here, during a major battle of the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan, at one the oldest fortified human sites of occupation known to archaeology, the good book says the walls of Jericho fell after the Israelites marched the Ark of the Covenant around the city walls, “once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh day, and then blew their trumpets.”
