Saying that the stirrup created medieval europe is a stretch , but not a big one .
说马镫创造了中世纪欧洲可能有些言过其实,但并不算太严重。
The social , economic , and legal systems that developed to support the mounted troops persisted for nearly a thousand years , long after the actual advantage of the stirrup had been neutralized .
The stirrup quickly transformed military strategy , but its success led to conflicts between church and state , between kings and their subjects , and between new landowners and subsistence-level farmers .
The stirrup is a classic example of what I described ten years ago as a killer application , or " killer app " - a technological innovation whose introduction disrupts long-standing rules of markets or even whole societies .
Saying that the stirrup created medieval europe is a stretch , but not a big one . As historian lynn white jr. put it , " few inventions have been so simple as the stirrup , but few have had so catalytic an influence on history . "
The stirrup , crop rotation , reading glasses , iron rope , the steam engine , railroads , the telegraph , antibiotics , automobiles , the atom bomb , the semiconductor ---- this is just a short list of inventions whose dramatic introductions were followed by even more dramatic changes to the civilizations that used them .