[kibwen]

According 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]

> 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.

[221qqwe]

> 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]

If 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]

A 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.