What I was referencing in my comment (bottom) was the stirrup, which suddenly allowed a mounted knight to stay in the saddle more securely while using a lance. Interestingly, the old saying of (turning swords into plowshares) also has a literal meaning--as in peacetime they would be the knives to cut through the dense sod the plows had to turn to open a new field for planting.
Now honestly, I don't know how furs in James' world would have gone through that era of progress, because those two things are what really started today's civilization as we know it. However, in their way they were given a free pass as a much more powerful civilization was destroyed when the great library of Alexandria was burned down.
--- In SkunkworksAMA_at_yahoogroups.com, Lily Kara <lilykarafox@...> wrote:
>
> I was always partial to the story by Ray Bradbury, 'The Sound of Thunder'...definitely not the movie adaptation...~shudder!~. How the demise of a butterfly, while seeming so insignificant actually had far reaching results both profound and subtle. Yeah. I'm a geeky kinda girl...so? Science is sexy!
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> Then again, even though he's an egotistical nut, Richard Bach's book 'One' likened potential points and outcomes of choices to something like the reflection of sunlight at the bottom of a pool with each intersection a variant of actual events. Maybe a little romantic and nonsense musings, but fun!
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> Lily =^.^=
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>
> ________________________________
> From: David <vulpine_at_...>
> To: SkunkworksAMA_at_yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 9:24 AM
> Subject: [SkunkworksAMA] Re: All things furry and snuggly!
>
>
>
>
> Of course, some of those strings would re-merge as a given decision would have a greater or lesser effect. Still, it's kind of funny how one tiny event, say 1000 years ago would now mean we live in a nuclear world. (If you don't remember the old Connections series by James Burke, be sure to look it up.)
>
Received on Thu Aug 15 2013 - 15:45:15 CDT