Well now I'm going to start calling it pebble-navigation.

"Leaving a trail of breadcrumbs" has been a phase for a long time. That that's what stuck, I suspect, because "breadcrumbs" is more specific and memorable than "pebbles," or because the breadcrumbs would be noticed and followed by a hungry someone other than the person who put them there (unlike the pebbles, which are of no use to a random passer-by).

Holy shit, you call them Hansel & Gretel? Here in my country we call them the equiavalent of John and Mary

I always thought of breadcrumbs as something that would lure a target down a path.

Breadcrumbs can be hijacked, manipulated, reordered, edited, disabled, or deleted via Javacript very easily as long as scripting is enabled and active in the browser (like on virtually everyone's browser except for the very few large penised giga-chads (or large vaginaed giga-fems in tech circles that disable all that entirely)).

So realistically, I think you're completely wrong in this assertion. I think breadcrumbs are a lot like breadcrumbs if you look at breadcrumbs the way you've presented breadcrumbs.

But also, H & G were children. Their breadcrumb scheme was creative and clever by child standards, even if it did not quite work out.

GRUBBY CANNIBAL BIG TECH AND ADS!

If you can trust people for anything, you can trust them not to have actually read all of the source material and certainly for taking the wrong conclusion away from it.

Incidentally, it works the same way with the bible.