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Medieval staircases were not built going clockwise for the defender's advantage
- michaelcampbell 3y agoI got it from context, but this title took me a second to figure out. Is it saying that the idea stairs are built clockwise for a defense advantage is a myth? eg: "Medieval staircases were not (built going clockwise for the defender's advantage)" Or that stairs were were purposely built NOT clockwise (or rather anti/counter clockwise), so that defenders would have an advantage? eg: "Medieval staircases were (not built going clockwise) for the defender's advantage" English is weird.
- YuccaGloriosa 3y agoI often notice comments made regarding ancient or historical locations and civilisations, when discussed by a historian in a documentary, often seem to be opinions based on pretty flimsy evidence. In some cases no evidence at all, just things could be likely maybe possibly. Relying on the fact that there's no written evidence for or against any claim.
- bobthepanda 3y agoEven if there is written evidence, nearly all past written information is also difficult to verify, and writers in the past were not necessarily unbiased or above lying and distortion.
- kibwen 3y agoAccording to the OP, there is written evidence for it, from the Victorian era, which was 400 years after cannons made castles obsolete. It's hard to fault modern historians too much if they're simply trusting the old records to be accurate. Or as we say in computer science: garbage in, garbage out.
- pmichaud 3y ago> It's hard to fault modern historians too much if they're simply trusting the old records to be accurate. Basically the entire job of a historian is to determine the credibility of old sources, so they can interpret all the data and come to the most accurate conclusion about what happened.
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- 221qqwe 3y ago> credibility of old sources Unsubstantiated conjecture by Victorian historians shouldn't really be treated as a "source" in the first place by actual historians.
- gwern 3y agoIf you click through, you can see there's no 'evidence' there. He simply offhandedly, in a sentence or two, makes the same speculation about fighting, with no sources, and the whole discussion of staircases in general is based on only 2 named examples. Chesterton's fence is satisfied: he knew no more than we did.
- JdeBP 3y agoA few points. Theodore Andrea Cook wasn't a historian. Xe was a writer for the Daily Telegraph, amongst other things, who wrote about sports such as fencing and rowing; and who was also an art critic. Theodore Andrea Cook wasn't writing in the Victorian Era. _Spirals in Nature and Art_ was a 20th century work, in the Edwardian Era. _The Curves of Life_ was from the subsequent Georgian Era. Theodore Andrea Cook is the earliest person found espousing this hypothesis. This is, as far as anyone has determined, Theodore Andrea Cook's own original hypothesis, based upon zero evidence. That is certainly what the text of _Spirals_ implies.
- wnissen 3y agoYes, it would take not just a real historian, but someone who had done research, to answer this question. Having been up and down a few of those, it certainly seems more than just plausible to me, even taking into account the numerous recorded sieges. On the other hand it is also true that spears and shields play a much greater role than swords. Hard to imagine wielding a full-sized shield, let alone a spear, in one of those staircases, though!
- Analemma_ 3y agoI think the bigger point from the article is that by the time people are fighting hand-to-hand in the tower stairwells, the defenders have already well and truly lost: comeback from such a state was probably impossible (and if the walls were breached the defenders would almost certainly have surrendered rather than fought to the last man). So it wouldn't have really made sense to design things for this possibility.
- jvanderbot 3y agoThis comment is a perfect example of GGP's problem with historical analysis. As is the nearly-exactly comment in TFA: > Frankly, if you find yourself in this position the castle is probably already lost. It's conjecture all the way down.
- qwytw 3y ago> It's conjecture Just like the entire staircase argument? Except that we actually know that: > Frankly, if you find yourself in this position the castle is probably already lost. Was true in almost all cases.
- ramblenode 3y agoThat's not a good counter-explanation. A castle staircase takes a lot of time and effort to build. Choosing to build the staircase in one direction or the other has negligible cost. If there is even a slight or possible advantage to one direction then it would make sense to build it that way. Defense in depth.
- duxup 3y agoI love me some history information, documentaries, and etc. But yeah I get strongly allergic to stuff where suddenly I wonder "Wait did you just logic that out in your head? Like there's no basis for that other than you observing how the thing / situation is?" I'm sure it has been an issue forever but online especially it seems painful how much of that information there is.
- alexpotato 3y agoMy favorite version of the logic it out: "People asked me if this tribe was originally from this area or if they migrated here. I always say: clearly they were from here. The weather is so bad around these parts, who would choose to move here from somewhere else?" - German historian
- groestl 3y agoAlong these lines, a well established rule in Archaeology: "Was man nicht erklären kann, sieht man gleich als kultisch an" (what cannot be explained, is immediately perceived as religious)
- pc86 3y ago"That is either an incense dispenser, or a ceremonial ... sarcophagus." "My German is pre-industrial, and mostly religious."
- watwut 3y agoYou expect pop documentaries to contain evidence? I do not mean it as snark, it is just that evidence is something popular entertainment ia not even supposed to have.
- catlover76 3y agoA lot like evolutionary psychology; it seems like a reasonable explanation or story and is supported by at least some circumstantial evidence, so it must have been the way things were
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- JP44 3y agoCould it be them optimising their floorplan? Direction of the spiral is based on e.g. the largest possible entry or smallest obstruction(in terms of construction and visually for the rest of the room/castle?
- a-dub 3y agoif i were to guess it probably has more to do with left hand side driving semantics which as i understand comes from a prevalence of right-handedness and a norm of posturing the right hand for weapon use. so, maybe they just adopted the rules of the road, and the legends that come from it.
- redwall_hp 3y agoI'll do one better: they weren't built clockwise, as clocks were not available. They were built reverse-widdershins or sunwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widdershins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widdershins
- headstorm 3y agoDeosil is the counterpart which means reverse-widdershins or sunwise, mentioned in your link.
- kwyjibo1230 3y agoWow, so Widdershins is not just a made-up word from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series!
- Tagbert 3y agoIt seems it goes back a little further than that. > probably from Middle Low German weddersinnes, literally "against the way" https://www.etymonline.com/word/widdershins#etymonline_v_7994 https://www.etymonline.com/word/widdershins#etymonline_v_799... Basically, this is NOT the way.
- redwall_hp 3y agoI'll admit that Discworld is the first place I heard it. It's a perfect example of the sort of idiom authors should think about though, rather than using overly modern terms.
- INTPenis 3y agoI love the word sunwise. In Swedish it's "medsols" and "motsols", sunwise and counter-sunwise respectively. And speaking of, let's start another myth. Swedes always dance around the christmas tree or maypole sunwise because it's an ancient dance to evoke the sun after months of darkness.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoI thought the pole and dance in Sweden was at midsummer. In England it's on Mayday.
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- TheRealPomax 3y agoBut did staircases going into basements go clockwise?
- sethammons 3y agoThere we go; now something to falsify against. If the left or right is a defensive choice, we should see the reverse handedness defending attackers going down. Great point.
- sixothree 3y agoClockwise upward staircases do actually have one advantage (in certain locales). Going upwards your forward travel distance is less than going downwards. This is assuming people generally walk on the right hand side. It just feels easier to traverse stairs as close to the inside as possible.
- Someone 3y ago> It just feels easier to traverse stairs as close to the inside as possible. I would expect that depends on the design of the spiral staircase. In a spiral staircase, you want to go up about 3 meters in a 360° turn because you need a bit over 2m of headroom and some space for the stair itself. That means that, 1m away from the center of the staircase, the slope will be about 50%. The ideal staircase has more or less “step width + twice the step height = 63cm” [1], so that would give a good step width of 31cm and a step height of 16cm. However, 2m away from the center, that same stair would have a slope of about 25%, and the ideal step would be 41cm wide and 11cm high or thereabouts. 3m from the center you’d have a 16% slope, and the ideal step would be 45 cm wide, 8cm high, etc. Now, in ‘standard’ designs [2], step height can’t change with distance to the center, so the designer has to pick one, and thus has control over the distance from the center where it’s easiest to step. [1] https://www.practicalarchitecture.com/blog/the-geometry-of-a-comfortable-staircase https://www.practicalarchitecture.com/blog/the-geometry-of-a.... Of course, that’s a heuristic, and the ideal will be different for different persons, but what’s important is that simply scaling up a staircase in order to get wider steps is not a good idea. [2] very wide stairs can and sometimes do have steps that are sloping upwards. I don’t think these are non-standard, but can’t think of a better word now.
- jackconsidine 3y ago> Sieges often didn’t involve much fighting at all, as simply waiting outside the castle till the people inside ran out of water and food was a much easier and less bloody way to win. Currently reading Plutarch. Twice already he's mentioned sieges where the attackers waited for the besieged to run out of water. The grueling wait is compressed in history.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoMy favorite siege weirdness is circum- and contravallation. Caesar's seige of Alesia perhaps being one of the better examples. The man built a wall around the already walled fortification of Alesia... then built a wall behind him to keep the besieging army safe from Vercingetorix' allies. That's a wall around a wall around a wall. Like a frickin' onion.
- catlover76 3y agoLike an ogre, one might say
- jamiek88 3y agoMy favorite siege story is Alexander being taunted by islanders who thought themselves immune to being under siege and attacked. They slowly stopped laughing as they realized the Macedonians were filling in the shore front to make a kilometer long 200m wide causeway to march across. It did not end well for the island City of Tyre and its inhabitants.
- lloeki 3y agoI jumped to read a bit about it, expecting from your comment a swift victory, but it's much more involved than that, the sequence of attack strategies and counterattacks are quite suspenseful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC)#The_siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC)#The_sie...
- Tao3300 3y agoMy answer to the tiktok trend: "Roman Empire? Not much. Mostly I think about the late Republic."
- Hoasi 3y agoInconclusive. What if they built right-handed defenders AND left-handed defenders towers?
- digging 3y agoThe article states that they likely built neither because nobody wants to be fighting for their life 1:1 on a dank staircase with poor visibility. It's actually the much more logical option. Even if attackers are in the stairwell, why wouldn't you retreat to the top where you can accumulate real advantages?
- the_af 3y agoOh, but what if the attackers divided themselves in left-handed and right-handed attack groups, and chose the stairs to attack accordingly? This is getting silly :P
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoI think these staircases evolved to make it impossible for rapey male ducks to impregnate the castles. Ancient sources agree with my theory, so it must be true.
- the_af 3y agoIn support of your theory: no medieval castle ever laid duck eggs that hatched. . . . (An earlier version of my comment ended with "... ever laid duck eggs.", evidencing both my deep ignorance of medieval warfare and the biology of egg laying!)
- seabass-labrax 3y agoYou're right, but now I'm disappointed that this didn't make it into Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
- lwn 3y agoI've visited a castle in Germany once, where they had special short swords for defending the staircases. The staircases in that castle were too small to wield a regular sword.
- russdill 3y agoWas there period documentation? Or a just so story about short swords?
- Freak_NL 3y agoThat sounds eerily similar to the myth from the linked article. Although there is a chance that some enterprising blacksmith came up with a clever marketing scheme for those to convince the nobility that they really needed such a set of short swords. 'Just in case pillagers come up the stairs, and I'll throw in a Zweihänder for half the price too, in case your attacker steps out of reach of your regular sword!'.
- akozak 3y agoI love this. Naive feudal lords as the historical equivalent to high net worth preppers.
- eproxus 3y agoWhat could be more prepping than building a whole stone castle? It’s the historical equivalent of a bunker for most part of modern (and ancient) history
- smsm42 3y agoBuilding castles to cover captured terrain was pretty common (unless of course there already was one around, in which case you besiege and take it, if you can). Of course, building a stone ond rakes time, so they'd build a temp one first, and then, ic theh manage to keep the territory, update it. So if it's prepping, it's a very common and prudenf version of it.
- oh_sigh 3y agoI wonder if modern spiral staircases but also show the 70/30 R/L bias as well?
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- renewiltord 3y agoA lot of these historic stories are someone's fancy. In Turkey, they'll make up all these stories about wine flasks in Cappadocia that have this hole in the middle. Supposedly the sun must fall through the hole to bless it or something and I can't find any reference to that anywhere. But I wasn't able to find a historian of Turkey and that region to say it definitely was ahistorical.
- JdeBP 3y agoIt's amusing that the Hacker News reaction so far is to advance alternative hypotheses as to why helical staircases have a predominant chirality, without first establishing, as one should do if one were rigorous, that there is a need for an explanation in the first place, and that this is not, as is suggested in other articles (including one hyperlinked by the headlined one here), just a statistical fluke without significance that doesn't need explanation. To put things in modern parlance: A meme, invented from whole cloth by Daily Telegraph writer Theodore Andrea Cook 120 years ago because he liked fencing, was still going strong on Twitter in 2022; and people are still falling prey to believing its assumptions. One has to appreciate the additional irony of the Twitter account actually being named "history in memes".
- the_af 3y agoAgreed! I like that there has to be an explanation. "Just because" or "it's the same either way" aren't acceptable. I suppose the internet loves to solve a puzzle (a sentiment I understand and share!).
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- crazygringo 3y agoWhat about evidence for a simpler theory, such as they were built in the direction that made most sense from where the doors would wind up? Like if you go through the bottom/top door, it's more natural to walk straight forwards and then curve, rather than walk in, turn 90°, and then walk upwards. Obviously this wouldn't matter if the door were located facing precisely the middle of the spiral, but it certainly does if it more naturally opens on one side of the spiral.
- pzs 3y agoDoors can be built to open in four ways: inwards or outwards, hinge on the left or right. (Sorry if the language is wrong, non-native speaker here.) Considering that I am not sure I can follow why the door would make one direction more natural than the other. Maybe because there were more right-handed people than left-handed which made one setup more natural than the other?
- gowld 3y ago> hinge on the left or right. Not "left" or "right", which is different on roomside and stairside, but inside or outside of the spiral.
- bluGill 3y agoOften the room itself gives you reason to prefer one direction or another. If the door is in a corner you want the open door to be against the wall (unless you don't - I can't think of why, but...). If there are other doors on the same wall you need to consider them - sometimes hinges all the same for symmetry; sometimes opposite so the the doors don't bang into each other (when they are right next to each other.
- cushpush 3y agoReally fun question! Let's investigate chirality in all its manifestations, natural and humanmade.
- JdeBP 3y agoTheodore Andrea Cook did, writing _Spirals in Nature and Art_ in 1903 and _The Curves of Life_ in 1914. Unfortunately, we are here fighting the fallout 120 years later, as xe is the source of this very myth.
- im3w1l 3y agoSomething I would like to know: Do chirality statistics differ between castles and other buildings from the same era?
- gretch 3y agoMy own no-basis 30 second gun theory - what if they are all the same way because one guy who was really good at making them passed the knowledge down that way. Then everyone else followed from that one teaching and never bothered flipping it. It wasn’t better, it just won the coin flip
- mmanfrin 3y agoYou can go a step further and (maybe, I acknowledge this is a stretch) apply some evolutionary pressure in that it gave defensive advantages they didn't think about and so the people whose castles this guy/his students built retained their wealth and built more castles from the same building style.
- slim 3y agoalso, when the number of stairs built that way reaches critical mass, any stair built otherwise will feel awkward
- usrusr 3y agoThat's what I find most fascinating about the claimed 70/30 distribution, I'd either expect something very close to even or far more lopsided. Perhaps a closer look at the numbers would show a very clear default direction plus a strong priority for symmetry where applicable?
- edgarvaldes 3y agoWhat if the 30 percent are more close in region or time?
- derekp7 3y agoI recall an interview with someone doing a late night talk show, that they tried putting the guest on the right side of the host but that didn't sit to well with audiences because they were used to seeing the guest on the left side. No reason for it other than that is what the first popular late show did, so everything else followed.
- xyzelement 3y agoEven if defensibility was not the primary design concern, I am sure it factored in as an obvious consideration to accommodate when possible - eg if you could make it go any which way, you might as well make it go the way that gives you a better chance in the most likely scenario.
- some_random 3y agoI'm not actually convinced, there's been a disconnect between the theory of war and the reality for as long as there's been war. Just because you'd never actually want to fight on a staircase doesn't mean that money and thought didn't go into defending a staircase from its middle. How many militaries today still issue bayonets to foot soldiers and handguns to rear line officers?
- samus 3y agoA modern bayonet is basically a combat knife, not a single-use item. Even though it has become rare, it is occasionally deployed. Officers simply retain their handguns when they get promoted into rear line positions; no special accommodation is required.
- bombcar 3y agoAnd we've just seen examples on the news where rear officers might have been better equipped had they had their handguns on them.
- majikandy 3y ago70/30 split sounds like there is a reason even if there isn’t primary evidence to backup the exact reason. Logically attack/defence sounds like it works and I was certainly able to imagine that on my first tour of a fort when I was young.
- bee_rider 3y agoI wonder what the split is nowadays. For example I lived in an apartment that had a counter-clockwise stairway, I’m not sure what the landlord’s handed was was, but I don’t think he designed it around defending against left handed sword-armed attackers.
- notahacker 3y agoThe scholarly source he links to (which actually agrees with him) notes in passing that for Norman castles, the split wasn't 70/30, it was more like 95/5....
- 221qqwe 3y agoOr maybe medieval people thought that it's easier to climb/carry stuff up if the stairs go clockwise (or some other mundane reasons)? Maybe architects just designed it that way because that's just how everyone builds castle staircases? Seems much more plausible to me (or at least as plausible..) > I was certainly able to imagine that on my first tour of a fort when I was young. Most people visiting medieval castles probably significantly overestimate the frequency of hand to hand combat that might had taken place there (almost never as far as we know).
- antisthenes 3y agoUsually if the siege got to the point where attackers were IN YOUR TOWERs, then the next logical step would have been to either surrender or collapse the tower on the attackers to win a tactical victory. I am willing to bet $10000, that the number of sieges won or lost due to a staircase fight between knights is 0. Also I wonder what led to this hypothesis being created in the first place? That's a much more interesting question to me. Was it some eccentric historian just inventing it?
- karaterobot 3y agoTo be clear, this article does not attempt to explain why 70% of stairs were built clockwise, which seems salient. And the strongest arguments against the myth are that fighting on a staircase is bad no matter what (granted), and that certain, specific, famous staircases (like those in the Tower of London) were built counter-clockwise. To me, that's not a slam dunk case against the myth, it could be explained by there not being a centralized Castle Staircase Building Code across all Europe, over the course of 1000 years, which was not a misunderstanding I had anyway. I am unconvinced for now!
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoI'd imagine they were built in a direction without a ton of thought, and it's not really surprising to me that if you basically flip a coin - 70% of them landed one way. If the staircase happens to be on one side of the building, it would be better to orient it one way - based on how the windows would work - for example. If the staircase is against another busy entryway - it might be better to have the stairs go one way or the other, etc
- canadianfella 3y agoIf it was up to a coin flip, it wouldn’t be 70 percent.
- idiotsecant 3y agoI am not a medieval stonemason but these were lifelong craftsmen and I doubt they did it without a lot of thought. They did it with one specific thought it their mind I suspect, it was the way that they were most familiar with doing it so it was the fastest / easier / cheapest way to do it! The same reason any modern craftsman does quite a lot of things.
- jethro_tell 3y agoI'd like to see that 70% distribution mapped out against corner adjacency. As in, if I have a square room [ ] and I put a stairway on the right wall in the bottom corner there, there is a good chance I'm going to go counter clockwise, but if I put it on the right top, I'll go clockwise. I feel like the general flow of a room needs to be mapped out on this as well to get the full context.
- civilitty 3y agoThe source mentioned in TFA is much better, with more photos and original content: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/12/18/no-medieval-staircases-werent-designed-to-give-right-handed-defenders-an-advantage/ https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/12/18/no-medieval-sta...
- pagekicker 3y agoThis article is not very good, notably, it is almost all guessing, no evidence. An explanation that I would have found plausible: building stairs clockwise is cheaper somehow.
- JdeBP 3y agoThe irony is that you would have found the original proposition of the hypothesis, by Theodore Andrea Cook in 1903, to be exactly the same thing. Cook presented zero evidence, clearly was originating the hypothesis, and made it up from whole cloth. Xe was a sports writer and art critic, not a historian, moreover. It's a half-paragraph aside in a book entitled _Spirals in Nature and Art_, using words like "would" and "probable". And after 120 years of uncritical repetition and amplification, here we are.
- rdtsc 3y agoFighting is fun to talk about but most of the time people didn't fight on the stairs, they, unsurprisingly, simply climbed up and down on them. So, maybe it's more comfortable to walk up the stairs that way? People are mostly right footed (60% as per [1]), so perhaps there is something about having the stronger right foot where the stairs are narrower when going up. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-asymmetric-brain/202002/5-scientific-facts-about-left-footedness https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-asymmetric-brain...
- hutzlibu 3y agoAh, but going down is more tricky than up, so you want the strong foot on the slim side rather in this case.
- wizofaus 3y agoI have to admit I had that thought - if I needed to get down a narrow staircase in a hurry, I'd prefer if it were anti-clockwise. But apparently another competing theory is that clockwise staircases allow people to put their right hand against the wall for balance/safety... implying if they had anything to carry (including a lamp!) they'd prefer to do so in their left hand, which isn't too convincing either. But in fact on further consideration, the fact that if you have something largish to carry, you'd probably want it on the wider side, and would be more likely you'd carry it in your right hand, might have something going for it...though I'm not sure why that would be obviously more so going down than going up (and logically I'd expect more things would be carried up from the ground floor than v/v, particularly shortly after building the castle. From the upper floor you can discard used/broken objects by tossing them over the side!).
- usrusr 3y agoI wonder what the etiquette for oncoming traffic was, those spiral staircases with a central spine aren't really walkable anywhere but at the outer wall. Whoever has to step to the spine side would probably want a hand on the spine, palm making contact from the uphill side no matter wether facing up or down. So for someone uphill, the spine contact would be made with the outside hand (arm crossing in front), for someone downhill with the inside hand. On a clockwise staircase, this would leave the right hand comfortably idle for candle, tool or whatever the person deferring to (presumably higher ranking?) oncoming traffic on the wall side is carrying.
- jameshart 3y agoSimilar article discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29274875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29274875
- wizofaus 3y agoWere staircases built around the same time but in non-strategic/non-fortified buildings (private manors etc.) notably different? Or were spiral staircases only built in circular towers that existed primarily for defence? Presumably the narrowness was largely due to the difficulty of being a strong enough tower with a wider radius.
- btbuildem 3y agoI'm a little disappointed that the article's author didn't make a counter-claim, or at least speculate on what some other reasons may have been. I'll throw my idea in: most spiral staircases turn counter-clockwise, because they were notoriously dark / badly lit, so one had to hold a torch or a lamp while traversing them. Since majority of people are right-handed, stands to reason a person would be holding the source of light in their right hand, and hold on to the hand-rail (or wall) with their left. You'd naturally want to lean on the outside wall of the staircase, as the stair treads there are wider than near the centre of the spiral. QED! (let me know if you spot the flaw in my logic)
- jedberg 3y agoThat only applies going up.
- Levitating 3y agoIf I visualize walking up a staircase, I'd much prefer them clockwise so that I can touch the center with my right hand when walking up, for some additional stability. Also, much staircases I know are clockwise. Which is also my theory for this myth, most staircases were build clockwise simply because most were already build clockwise. It fits Okkam's razor.
- AngryData 3y agoThe stair is much thinner near the center though. If the center pillar was wide enough that would probably be fine but if the pillar isn't fairly large your foot may only get like an inch or two of tread near the center and be easier to fall down.
- Levitating 3y agoThis reminds me of the many articles stating that pirates didn't wear eye-patches to cover up an injury but that they used them for for their eyes to adjust to the dark when entering a ships hold. Even though there's more evidence that eye injuries were probably just common across pirates. Applying Okkam's razor I'd conclude that most medieval staircases were probably build clockwise simply because most staircases were already built clockwise.
- alastairp 3y agoAnother anecdotal description of old staircases that I've heard of before is from Burgos castle in Spain, where (it's said) that the stairs to the bottom of the well change direction half way down to prevent you from getting too dizzy [1] > Se accede al interior por unas escaleras de caracol. Para evitar el mareo, los 4 primeros tramos se hacen en el sentido de las agujas del reloj y los dos últimos tramos en sentido contrario. [1] https://rutasparatodaslasedades.blogspot.com/2019/07/el-castillo-de-burgos.html https://rutasparatodaslasedades.blogspot.com/2019/07/el-cast...
- gooseus 3y agoI'm gonna guess it correlates with the handedness of the builder. As a right-handed person, when I've built spiral towers in games they have been clockwise because when building from the bottom up, clockwise just seems "right".
- MarketingJason 3y agoWhat if it was still about the weapons - but more about them being sheathed? A right hander will usually have a sword sheathed on their left hip sticking out and down. Maybe it was a safety measure to have the tip not hanging over the inner part of the stairwell as someone was going up where someone behind them could get poked versus more along the outer wall?
- aristofun 3y agoThis is what strikes me more than the topic: > The person below you has the advantage of jabbing at your legs Weren't virtually all fighters in those times men?
- howenterprisey 3y agoCan you expand on that?
- aristofun 3y agowhy use (abuse) the word "person" then?
- beej71 3y agoBecause if you say the "man" it implies that women fighters would not have the same advantage, when clearly they would. As since men are people, I'd argue it's not an abuse of language.
- aristofun 3y agoagain — in those times women did not fight to get advantage in the first place why not use this to be more precise in the language?
- throwbadubadu 3y agoMajority, but not all were men? But why care about that at all and consider it the most striking thing about the article? Even rethinking it 3 times I'm not sure what you find preciser in this, or how it is not completely irrelevant?
- beej71 3y agoYou sound pretty sure that women would never be among the attackers, but that seems like a risky bet to me. There are historical accounts of Viking attackers who were women, for example.
- legitster 3y agoThis explanation has always seemed a bit daft to me. > If it had been common knowledge among castle builders, then why are there still quite a lot (about 30%) of castles with counter-clockwise staircases? AKA it's almost surely just a builder's preference probably stemming from their handedness.
- codedokode 3y agoSuch staircases are pretty scary to climb even without a knight attacking you because there is nothing to hold, the steps are not flat and it is easy to fall down. Also, such straicases are used not only in medieval castles. A modern Russian 19th century cathedral also has a staircase of such type. Probably, because cathedrals must be built using traditional architecture?
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoThat cathedral you are talking about, has two spiral staircases, one counter-clockwise and the other clockwise.
- usrusr 3y agoLong article without even the tiniest hint of evidence to support the claim that the easier to defend theory wasn't the reason why apparently there is a considerable imbalance in staircase direction. The reality is that most of the time most castles were not involved in violence at all (outside of rough methods of keeping order I guess). Even if staircase fighting never ever happened, the imagination of heroically fending off invaders who made it that far in person could have easily been a clever pose, a tool of the trade for architects to give the impression of really knowing all the tricks. Claiming better defensibility would have made an even bigger impression on the future inhabitant than on tourists hundreds of years later. Because, assuming that the article is not wrong in this, the customer has just as little experience fighting in a staircase as the tourist hordes. Medieval snake-oil, claiming that it never happened should require better evidence than "you really would not want to ever let invaders get that far". If it's a 30/70 distribution chances are that almost half of those 70 are just as random or motivated by more pressing concerns than the "wrong direction" 30, and of the remaining 40 that make up the imbalance, a certain amount will be habitual copies of conscious decisions for the snake-oil winding. Yeah, whenever a tour guide brings up the defensive advantage story, chances are that this particular staircase wasn't really designed as defense-optimized but random/some other reason/habitual. But unless someone proposes a better explanation for the imbalance (I don't know, some pseudoreligious thing perhaps? Some echo from whatever way Romans preferred? Oncoming traffic etiquette, like climbing side steps toward the steep side, taking a break grabbing the stair's spine while the descending side slides past at the outer wall, and they'd both rather have their dominant hand wall-side?), it's a rather bold claim to call it a victorian era fabrication.
- p1esk 3y agothe customer has just as little experience fighting in a staircase as the tourist hordes You’re talking about a customer who most likely received a rigorous sword fight training, and probably participated in numerous knight tourneys. And spent his life living in castles, walking up and down those stairs. And who most likely knew someone who had personally engaged in castle offense or defense (the world was a lot smaller back then). Somehow I think this customer would know a thing or two about defending castles. You could be right about the sales tactics, but comparing a medieval castle owner and a 21st century tourist is a bit much.
- jack_riminton 3y agoIt has no mention of the masons, who had strict codes and rules of thumb and where all the knowledge was passed down in oral form through apprenticeships and quite a lot of secrecy (hence the Freemasons). I'm not sure it proves or disproves the main point, but it's a glaring omission that if investigated could explain it
- ofslidingfeet 3y agoSaying it definitively didn't factor in is at least as stupid as saying it definitively did.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoI think people found out that more falls happened while descending than while ascending, so it was more important to have right hand holding the rails at the outer wall when descending. Thus counter-clockwise direction while going down and clockwise when going up.
- chmod600 3y agoConsidering that the construction costs are identical, there needn't be a very strong reason to do it one way vs the other. Any reason would be enough, which might include some remote possibility of a battle advantage.
- OrvalWintermute 3y ago> Castle builders knew that it didn’t really make a huge difference which way the stairs go, they’re not suitable for fighting at all, neither party has a lot of space to wield those long, pointy, sharp weapons. This is written by someone without experience in hand to hand combat as many weapons were blunt (like a mace or club) and a rondel dagger in an unarmored spot is far more difficult to parry than a sword. Speaking of which, a rondel dagger was specifically intended for grappling situations. Thrusting weapons were in many cases preferred for tight quarters combat although there are slashing weapons specifically designed for tight quarters combat as well. Sword variants like longer greatswords specifically designed vs. halbred or pike formations were not ideal for close quarters, but there were several short sword types Even in more ancient times, weapons such as the Sica, from which we get the word sicario, were well known as a tool used in gladiatorial combat, and in the Judean wars. Additionally, the gladius wielded with the large shield, the scutum, was only an 18 inch short sword. Short because it was ideal for close quarters fighting via a thrust against other heavy infantry.
- jjk166 3y agoGoing through the cited sources, I'm more convinced the defender's advantage theory is right than before I started. First the claim that stairs would not be optimized for combat because fighting on stairs was undesirable holds no weight. Castles were designed with many layers of defense - it was entirely expected that large sections of a castle would be lost and the defenders would continue to hold out in other sections, bitterly holding chokepoints. From murder holes to machicolations, every inch of castles were optimized defense. Even if in practice defenders would prefer not to fight on a stairway, if all else were equal (and it's hard to think of something more arbitrary than which way the stones are flipped), why wouldn't they go with the option that potentially could be helpful instead of potentially aiding an attacker? Next, the argument that "not all castles had clockwise staircases" seems to be an own-goal. During the time periods when having to defend a castle was likely, staircases were overwhelmingly clockwise. It is only in the late middle ages when defense became much less of a priority that anticlockwise stair cases start gaining popularity, and the later it gets the more common anticlockwise stairs become. If there were some non-military utilitarian reason for the choice, such as making it easier for someone to steady themselves or carry lanterns, presumably that need would remain. If the choice were non-utilitarian from the beginning, why the initial disparity? No doubt the designers of these buildings had multiple competing concerns, including aesthetics and convenience, but clearly the balance shifted. Examples of anticlockwise stairways were common in structures not intended for defense in earlier structures, which means the shift was not technological and further makes non-military utilitarian requirements unlikely. Obviously it would be nice if we had more surviving sources from the time period, but it's hard to imagine any other theory fitting the data so well.
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- mtreis86 3y agoPeople are dominantly right handed, so right hand on the wall. You need more space under your foot while descending, you only use the ball of your foot while going up. The stairs are thicker on the outside, so if that is on the right as you descend, the staircase will be counter clockwise.
- hermitcrab 3y agoThe victorians created a lot of persistent myths: -vikings with horns on their helmets -highlanders all wearing tartan -knights in plate armour not being able to get up if they fell over?
- fsckboy 3y agoyes, Vikings with horns on their helmets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veks%C3%B8_Helmets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veks%C3%B8_Helmets (from scandinavia, but a couple thousand years before the Vikings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Bronze_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Bronze_Age )
- hermitcrab 3y agoInteresting. But not really the animal horn helmets beloved of the victorians and, as you say, not contemporary with the vikings.
- fsckboy 3y agothis title/headline is ambiguous as to what it means. claim: "Medieval staircases were built going clockwise for the defender's advantage" counterclaim: "no they were not; medieval staircases were not built going clockwise for the defender's advantage"... it was for a different reason, or even, they weren't even built that way. clarifying original claim: "Medieval staircases were not built going clockwise for the defender's advantage, they were built counterclockwise." confused? me too. and the site is called "fakehistory..."? The title should be, "Exploring whether medieval staircases were built with chirality to benefit right handed defenders."
- stult 3y ago> Of course the only way to win would be by pushing your enemy back down the stairs and then with whoever is left above you, retake the entire castle. > Yeah, that’s unlikely to work out. > Frankly, if you find yourself in this position the castle is probably already lost. This argument directly contradicts the instructions of Vegetius, whose De Re Militari was *the* definitive military manual of the Middle Ages. Specifically, in book 4, he writes, > Innumerable instances are to be met with where the enemy were entirely cut in pieces, even after they had penetrated the body of the place: this certainly will happen, if the besieged continue in possession of the ramparts, towers, and highest parts of the city... The sole resource after a place is forced, either by day or night, is however to secure the ramparts, towers, and all the highest places, and to dispute every inch of ground with the enemy as they advance through the streets. It's hard to overstate how important Vegetius was to Medieval strategists, who treated his work practically as gospel and would generally try to follow its recommendations to the letter. So I seriously doubt any medieval strategist would have viewed the only conduit to the critical and decisive high ground positions as tactically irrelevant.
- Tao3300 3y agoVegetius, pray tell what the scrying glass saith of yon fortification level?
- bigstrat2003 3y agoVerily, coz, it saith the level be over four hundred and fifty score!
- Tao3300 3y agoGod's nails! Four hundred and fifty score?!
- Grimblewald 3y agoStill doesn't say anything about twisting direction of the staircase.
- sfink 3y agoHow wide are these stairs, typically? Because I've been in a staircase built by hand out of stone (and yes, I was given this exact explanation for why it was built clockwise, despite it being in Carmel, California, which is not exactly a hotspot for medieval sieges). And a lot of what people are talking about here is laughably irrelevant if the stairs were as steep and narrow as that one was. It was tight. I didn't have much trouble climbing it, but I'm not sure I could have navigated it at all wearing armor. Falling down the stairs was not an issue because you'd just fall against the curved wall. Passing by other people? Hahaha. Maybe if you were trying to play Medieval Twister. The defender advantage argument was viscerally satisfying, because you could so easily imagine how impossible it would be to do anything with the inward hand. Which is probably mostly evidence for why the myth persists, whether it is true or false. Though that itself could have applied to the builders or customers of times past. You can build them one way or the other, and here's a satisfying explanation for one even if it pertains to a situation that never happens, so... why not go with clockwise? Then again, if I were to speculate, I would wonder why the fixation on sieges? If the defensibility argument were true, couldn't it apply to other situations like an attack by the populace or staff? The lord's personal guard might still appreciate the edge. I can't help but think that carrying beer, torches, or chamber pots ought to be a bigger part of the justification, though.
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- Aeolun 3y ago> I'm not sure I could have navigated it at all wearing armor That’s another myth. Wearing a reasonable form of plate mail is sort of heavy, but doesn’t really restrict your movement as much as people seem to think.
- bradknowles 3y agoI've worn really good armor in SCA heavy combat. I've also been up some impossibly narrow curved staircases where I am certain I could not have made it while wearing armor -- I could barely squeeze through without armor. The top flights of stairs at Köln Cathedral are pretty tight, and the whole 55 flights of stairs is nothing to laugh at. Now, the difference is that I'm probably bigger than your average footman or knight who might have been trying to go up those stairs. But they definitely wouldn't be passing anyone on the stairs, and they definitely would have had trouble hacking on someone who was above them on the staircase. The one key fact that puts the idea to rest is all the staircases I've seen that spiral clockwise in one part of the building, and counter-clockwise in the other. Everything else being equal, both sets of stairs could be used to go either up or down, and you could choose which set to use. At Köln Cathedral, they tell you which ones are for up and which ones are for down, but if you're an invading attacker, you don't pay attention to the rules of the house you're invading.
- pbj1968 3y agoIn the UK, it’s possible to rent small castles. I’ve never felt more secure in my life. The stairs on the staircase were huge and would have slowed down anyone, particularly people of the average height at the time. You really contemplated whether or not you needed that thing when you faced those stairs.
- morita2342 3y agoIt‘s an example of war-centric history writing. Often wondered why history focuses as much on war and other petty fights.
- mkoubaa 3y agoThe more I read about medieval history the less I buy the narrative that it was a time of widespread ignorance and backwardness
- jeremiahbuckley 3y agoI find myself very interested in trying to figure out the story of medieval progress. Because I learned it was all fallen and ruined as a kid, and now I don’t believe it. But, I don’t have a grasp of the timescales of progress involved. My working theory is that progress was really slow until the written word, incremental improvements but still slow until the printing press, and pretty quick thereafter (until computers, and then the wheels came off). But…I would love to read a history from someone who actually studied it, and said “look at the pace of discovery from 1000BC-200AD, 200AD-1200AD, 1200-1600, etc.”
- timthelion 3y agoThere is a pretty significant flaw in this article in that it assumes castles mostly defended against war. When you read history books, and actually visit real castles, you learn the main threats were insurection, rebellion, and disease. Most royalty who were killed were killed by people within the castle walls, so the argument 'well you'd just give up' simply doesn't apply. You don't 'just give up' if your brother is trying to kill you or there is a peasant rebellian. Neither of those situations typically involve unbreakable seiges.... The idea that castles are not built for internal defence goes against a tremendous amount of archeological evidence. They are choke full of trap doors, weird side rooms, and hiding spots.
- PumpkinSpice 3y agoThe relative scarcity of castle sieges doesn't mean they weren't a major concern. It's quite likely that castles served as an effective "siege deterrent". That is, sieges weren't common specifically because the likelihood of success was low.
- timthelion 3y agoMy point was to criticise this paragraph: " For attackers it’s also not a very tempting scenario. If you’ve already breached all the outer walls and defeated all the soldiers there, who would want to risk their life crawling up some stairs where the defenders are waiting for you? Sieges often didn’t involve much fighting at all, as simply waiting outside the castle till the people inside ran out of water and food was a much easier and less bloody way to win. In many cases simply realising the enemy was going to sit outside and wait was enough to surrender." The author seems to be claiming that beyond the outer walls castles don't have defensive elements as they are pointless once the walls have been breached. This claim is false.
- civilitty 3y agoThe whole article is awful. > Sieges often didn’t involve much fighting at all, as simply waiting outside the castle till the people inside ran out of water and food was a much easier and less bloody way to win. In many cases simply realising the enemy was going to sit outside and wait was enough to surrender. This part for example is just straight up false. While many more sieges were won by surrender than successful assault, sieges were very violent and full of fighting. Sallies and even open field combat between groups of warriors wanting to make a name for themselves were a daily occurrence. The vast majority of cities and castles under siege had plentiful water supplies and could hold up to a years supply of food under rationing, especially if they had any time to prepare for the siege (which they almost always did because moving big armies is hard to do discretely). That preparation also stripped the surrounding area of forage for the armies, giving them hard time limits on how long they could siege before morale cratered. The attackers were just as likely to starve unless they had a constant supply line which the defenders constantly tried to disrupt. In order to overcome that disadvantage the sieging army had to really do a lot of damage and scare the besieged into surrender. Constant volleys from siege equipment into and over the walls, attempted escalades, towers and projectiles, and soldiers with pickaxes batter the walls. At the siege of Lisbon in 1147, two shifts of 100 men each shot thousands of stones a day using two trebuchets. Major assaults would even be planned out in the open to drive fear into the defenders and try to get them to surrender before a large wave of violence. Source: see the Soldiers’ Lives Through History - The Middle Ages chapter 4: Sieges. Lots of primary sources like the St Omer Chronicle in the notes.
- VikingCoder 3y agoSounds like you'd have to be sinister to attack up a medieval staircase.
- guhcampos 3y agoFun Fact: the author cites their own book as their main source.
- deafpolygon 3y agoThe simplest explanation is probably that, it was just simply done that way. There's no documented explanation why 70% of the staircases are clockwise. There's a myriad of things that we do in this world that don't have a basis for explanation, other than "it's just simply done that way".
- dustedcodes 3y ago> If it had been common knowledge among castle builders, then why are there still quite a lot (about 30%) of castles with counter-clockwise staircases? For the same reason why there are still a lot of tower blocks being built with combustible cladding or why we still find many houses not being built earth quake proof in prone countries: idiots and bunglers. > The Tower of London, one of the most important castles in England, where royalty live(d) has counter-clockwise stairs! That's a bad example. It was built in 1066 (the first part) by Norse people who occupied England and not the English. I wouldn't be surprised if the workmanship of building stone castles hugely differed between those two peoples at that time. > If you’ve already breached all the outer walls and defeated all the soldiers there and have reached so far into the castle that you’re at the foot of stairs, you’re very close to victory and who would want to risk their life crawling up some stairs where the defenders are waiting for you? That assumes that every castle was huge and wars were fought between hundreds of soldiers. Sure when you have 200 soldiers inside your castle having defeated everyone except a handful of people up the tower then this would be pointless, but that is not what happened in reality. It's a Hollywood imagination of the battles fought. Many castles were tiny and the army was in the dozens, not hundreds. Raiders and other small groups of enemies would come in a couple dozens and not in hundreds. All of a sudden those stairs make A LOT of sense.
- reedf1 3y agoTechnically Norman not Norse. Granted the distinction is pretty pedantic.
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- Garvi 3y ago> Of course the only way to win would be by pushing yfour enemy back down the stairs and then with whoever is left above you, retake the entire castle. I see we're dealing with a castle siege expert over here. As I have visited many castles in Europe (I also live in bicycle driving distance of at least 5 medieval castles) and have heard this explanation many times, I was wondering about the authors counter arguments. Unfortunately there weren't any. I cannot tell for sure since part of the article is missing after "Of course if the enemy ". Now I will never now this another obvious fact. Reminds me of moon landing denier arguments: "Of course we didn't land on the moon. Duh! It doesn't make any sense AT ALL. Pfff!"