Superior early horse-shoe designs spread but were adapted, not adopted.

Evidence

The lack of diffusion and common adoption of what today appear to be superior early variations would not be surprising if they developed in isolation or secret. Yet, this is not the case, since the migration of nations occured exactly during this period 400–1000 CE, between the emergence of the Hunnish shoe and the Asiatic shoe. A German shoe circa 1000 CE gives us some evidence that these variations did diffuse and yielded reciprocal influence, as it has the Hunnish influence rather than being like shoes from Southern Europe. Early variations were not isolated, but were adapted rather than adopted as found. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 641

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: late-medieval Europe ran on ‘adaptation, not adoption’ — technology transfer as local modification rather than copy-paste, an antidote to diffusionist narratives.
• SHARE: Send to anyone obsessed with medieval material culture — a Hunnish punched-hole shoe predating its ‘invention’ by 500 years.