In "A Sound of Thunder", what was the purpose of the path?

"A Sound of Thunder" concerns a group of hunters going into the past via a time machine, in order to hunt animals that are extinct in modern times.

A significant amount of exposition is devoted to explaining the possible problems arising from time travel, specifically the possibility of interfering with innocuous events that are in some way directly connected to the nature of the world as we know it. For example, accidentally killing even a...

"A Sound of Thunder" concerns a group of hunters going into the past via a time machine, in order to hunt animals that are extinct in modern times.

A significant amount of exposition is devoted to explaining the possible problems arising from time travel, specifically the possibility of interfering with innocuous events that are in some way directly connected to the nature of the world as we know it. For example, accidentally killing even a single bacterium could alter the course of history, leading to changes that we cannot anticipate, and so the hunters make every effort to minimize their impact on the times that they travel to, with the exception of killing their intended targets.

One direct way of keeping a low profile is the use of an antigravity path (simply called "the Path", the capital denoting its importance) which allows the hunters to walk through the ancient environment without directly stepping on anything. It might also be inferred that the Path is also a metaphor for the path of history itself; staying on the Path is a means of ensuring that you, too, stay on the path of history from which you came.