Throughout the history of the humankind, there's been one factor which has
considerably slowed down the development of many civilizations from stone
age to the modern age. Many workarounds have been tried to eliminate this
problem, but through to these days, the problem still persists to some
extent. Luckily some of these partial solutions to the problem have given us
ways to cope. These solutions have allowed us to found great civilizations
and we can be very proud of our accomplishments which include modern level
of technology, beautiful pieces of sophisticated art and overall
infrastructure, which are key factors in defining our quality of life. The
oldest human civilizations are now thousands of years old and we have
managed to preserve many things of our ancestors, despite the underlying
problem which is still an obstacle to our progress. I'm of course talking
about feet.

We humans are born with feet. Luckily we have only two feet while dogs, cats,
foxes, elephants, tigers, lions and other many creatures have more than two.
Many insects, the so called low life forms, like spiders and myriapods have
even more than four. Dolphin, which is regarded to be one of the most
intelligent animals is born without feet. Each creature is born with a
brain and certain amount of feet. The more the creature has feet, the
more stupid the creature gets. We are smarter than dogs, right?

The word 'feat', which is phonetically the same as the word 'feet', is not
a coincidence. The word feat actually derives from feet. Even during
the Middle Ages, the people had already learned that feet make everything
harder. For this reason, different tasks of valour were measured in feet.
Doing the dishes which is a relatively easy task would perhaps be two feet,
while slaying a bear might be regarded as eight feet. Then during time
the word 'feat' became to have its own meaning.

So why is it that the brain and the feet just cannot work together? The
reason is simple. Brain is located inside the head and the feet are located
in an entirely opposite direction. Both the brain and the feet have a mind
of their own and the distance between the brain and feet is too long for
them to communicate properly. Also, when the number of feet increases, the
amount of communication errors also increases. This factor which has a
significant effect in defining intelligence is called as brain/feet-ratio.
The brain/feet-ratio can be calculated simply by dividing the amount of
brains with the amount of feet. If the creature has four feet and one brain
(like creatures usually have), 1/4 = 0.25 or 25%.

At the beginning of 14th century, Italian cardinals argued with the Pope
that when calculating the brain/feet-ratio, one should take the distance
between the head and feet to the equation. French cardinals protested,
claiming such things to be entirely ridiculous, quite rightfully so I
might add. After Pope Benedict XI died, his successor Clement V, a
strong supporter of generic brain/feet-ratio, moved the Curia from Rome
to Avignon after a heated dispute, starting the period kwnon as
the Avignon papacy.

Under the patronage of Philip IV, the King of France, Pope Clement V ordered
many tests to be made to find out how much the brain/feet-ratio actually
affects the intelligence. One of the most famous experiments is the
Avignon March in 1312. In this experiment, the test subjects were supposed
to walk 50 miles from Avignon to Marseille. As test subjects, there
was used a peasant, a horse and a peasant riding a horse. Before the
test started, the brain/feet-ratio was carefully documented: Peasant,
(1 brain, 2 feet, ratio=50%), a horse (1 brain, 4 feet, ratio=25%) and
a peasant riding a horse (2 brains, 6 feet, ratio=33%). Each of the
test subjects were told to go to Marseille and the results were as follows:
The peasant with 50% brain/feet-ratio arrived in Marseille, so did the
riding peasant with 33% ratio, but the horse alone just ran away after
it was released from its leash and never came to Marseille with its 25%
brain/feet-ratio. The Avignon March is seen as one of the first
brain/feet-ratio tests in history. The test succesfully proved that
sense of direction exists somewhere between 25-33% range on the
brain/feet-scale.

The communication problem of brain and feet can sometimes be seen in every
day life. A few days ago I was going to a restaurant and I had made an
appointment with my friend at 3:00 pm. My brain wanted to be on time, but
I arrived about 3:05. I was five minutes late. My brain wanted to be there
but my feet wouldn't let me.

One day I was walking downtown and I saw an attractive looking woman who
was walking in front of me. While I was passing her, I thought I could
maybe see her face, but she wore some sort of hoodie because it was cold
outside so I couldn't. At the same time there was this elderly woman
who was walking with sticks. I had this idea that if I would kick her
sticks, the old grandma would probably fall down and there would have
been no chance in hell that the young attractive woman wouldn't
confront me. Any decent person would, when committing such an atrocious
thing, right? This would have been a perfect way to see how her face
looked like, from close distance. This time my feet wanted to do it, but
my brain wouldn't let me.

I mentioned in the beginning that while feet are a nuisance, many things
have been tried to eliminate the problem of feet. One of the most
important inventions is the wheel. A small round thing that you can
see on cars, bicycles, mopeds and and so on has revolutionized our
life. By creating machines that use wheels, we can eliminate the use
of feet, thus increasing our capability to function. When the wheel was
originally invented somewhere in the stone age, there was a bearded guy
who probably thought "I don't know what to do with this, but I'm sure
this round thing will change the future some day.", and he was right,
although he maybe did it by grunting in Morse code rather than in English.

Those people didn't yet know that feet would slow them down. The later
civilizations, such as the Babylonians discovered that feet would be
trouble, so they started to use war chariots to eliminate their own
use of feet. However, they didn't realize that even though they had
eliminated their own feet, there was still four feet because of the horse
and with two brains, the brain/feet-ratio would still be 50%, the same
as if they were walking. The Romans attempted the same trick, but it
would take centuries before an actually working solution would be
invented.

The first solution to fix the feet problem was the automobile. The key
people responsible of automobile were Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler to name
a few. During the same times there was a person who influenced in North
America and designed a new automobile for the common folk. Back then only
the richer people could afford to buy an automobile, so poor people commonly
spoke of these vehicles of things they cannot "afford". For this reason the
automobile manufacturers decided to make a cheaper model for everyman that
didn't have all the luxuries, but which would still be an automobile. This
cut down version of automobile was called "Ford", which is a pun of the
word afford, but "af" is cut off from the start.

Now in year 2012, the wheel is used in many inventions. The cities are
filled with automobiles that people use to eliminate the negative aspect
of feet. Even the cars have a symbolic steering wheel to commemorate the
vital invention. Every four years we have Olympics, a competition where
the nations of our world come together to compete and its logo is,
surprise: Five round wheels! The wheel is everywhere and its significance
in fighting against feet cannot be overlooked. Even Stephen Hawking,
the world's leading theoretical physicist and one of the smartest people
on Earth moves with a wheelchair without using his feet at all.

Coincidence? Think again!