A TRANSFORMATIVE TECHNOLOGY THAT WASN’T
Put simply – and it is simplistic — the Stirrup Thesis argued that when the Franks discovered the stirrup in the eighth century, they used it to develop a new form of mounted shock combat with the couched lance, made cavalry the dominant military arm and knights the backbone of the military aristocracy (and that then led to a wholesale r/evolution in society to support the horseowning aristocracy that gets shorthanded in another quasi-mythical concept, ‘feudalism’), and promptly turned back the Umayyad invasion of Gaul from the Iberian Peninsula, thus securing Europe for Christendom.
The problem is, almost all of this is wrong except for Charles Martel winning the Battle of Tours in 732 (also known as the Battle of Poitiers and the Battle of the Highway of the Martyrs by the Arabs).
