Now I know where the idea for spiral stairs came from - squirrels.
There were a pair of squirrels involved in a lively game of tag today. I noticed they never ran straight up or down the trees. Time and again they spiraled around the trunks as they scurried from ground to branches and back again.
I'm guessing it's an instinctive countermeasure to confuse predators.
But long before that "ah-ha"moment came to me I was imagining a perplexed homesteader trying to figure out how to get a staircase into a compact home. Getting ready to fell the next tree in preparation for making the components of his stair, the builder was startled to have two gray furry critters dash between his feet and spiral up the tree.
Picking up on the gift he had been given, the builder simply axed the tree just below branch height, shoved it through the front door and into the opening to the second floor. After pruning selectively he was left with a set of branches spiraling upward. Wa-la. The spiral staircase was born
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