Just remember to lift the back foot before the front foot lands...
> My rule of thumb is that in good land where the danger level
> is not excessive, villages will be about a league apart
> (since walking more then half an hour to the outer fields--
> longer driving oxen no doubt-- makes it worthwhile building
> something closer). Someone living in old agricultural areas
> of europe could probably check those distances
> more accurately.
Something I read at Uni on history of science suggested that the size of villages was limited by how far a farmer could walk in an hour, and the big contribution of the horse collar was that you could travel further in that hour on horseback, and thus villages could be larger and still have work be within an hour of home. (That meant that the small surpluses could be added together and used to support artisans, priests, and people who learnt things instead of working) which indirectly affected a lot of social arrangements.
I also get the impression that the forests around villages are useful (fuel, building material, and such like) so I expect that there'll probably be significant forests between towns as well as farms, unless the area has been extensively farmed for a long time.
Cheers,
Stephen
-- Stephen Rennell steve_at_... Wellington, New Zealand GPG fingerprint - CD0F 78C6 1AAE 8726 803A F1D0 F123 8486 062F 0317
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