defensive-aggressive passes
This design webpage cites several examples of how right handedness influences real world design. Of spiral staircases it says:
Visit any church or castle in Europe next time you are there and you will probably find a spiral staircase or two. Most of them spiral anti-clockwise as they go down (and thus clockwise as they go up). Apparently this was to favor defensive sword use should the building be overrun at any time. If you are up the spiral staircase and are right-handed and facing down the stairs you will have the central axis of the stairs on your left and you will be able to swing your sword at your foe coming up the stairs. He on the other hand will have the central axis on his right and so it will be directly in the way of his sword swings. There is enough contemporaneous information to back up which hand swordsmen used to use in those days…”
‘John Cabot’ sailed to America from Bristol in 1496. Apparently he is widely accredited as being the first European to discover North America since the Vikings. In Bristol there is a tower dedicated to him. This web-page describes the tower with quirkily expressed appreciation of the spiral staircase direction.
Several castles specifically had clockwise down spiral staircases with left-handed swordsmen to protect them. why is this good? Left handed swordsmen normally fight right handed swordsman but the converse is not so, consequently left handed swordsmen are more well practiced in fighting a right-hander than righthanders are in fighting a left-hander. Left handers are often more effective in some ‘sports’ such as ‘fencing’.
Why do castle staircases predominantly spiral one direction based on handedness while driving-sides vary? The shifting use of the right hand from wielding a weapon against a potential adversary to using a whip on pairs of horses pulling a heavy load appears to have played a significant role. This webpage describes the evolution of different driving sides. It cites American and French ‘teamsters’ for initiating a shift from road users predominantly passing with their left hands on the nearside followed by the Napoleonic empire pushing the new standard throughout Europe and the British for doing their “best to stave off global homogenisation“. This excerpt describes the beginning of the shift:
In the past, almost everybody travelled on the left side of the road because that was the most sensible option for feudal, violent societies. Since most people are right-handed, swordsmen preferred to keep to the left in order to have their right arm nearer to an opponent and their scabbard further from him. Moreover, it reduced the chance of the scabbard (worn on the left) hitting other people.
Furthermore, a right-handed person finds it easier to mount a horse from the left side of the horse, and it would be very difficult to do otherwise if wearing a sword (which would be worn on the left). It is safer to mount and dismount towards the side of the road, rather than in the middle of traffic, so if one mounts on the left, then the horse should be ridden on the left side of the road.
In the late 1700s, however, teamsters in France and the United States began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. These wagons had no driver’s seat; instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team. Since he was sitting on the left, he naturally wanted everybody to pass on the left so he could look down and make sure he kept clear of the oncoming wagon’s wheels. Therefore he kept to the right side of the road… …An official keep-right rule was introduced in Paris in 1794, more or less parallel to Denmark, where driving on the right had been made compulsory in 1793
Wendy left-handed-inconsistent-potentially-dangerous-passer
March 25th, 2006
Those Brits being akward JUST for the sake of it AGAIN!
[reply]