title: Does Backbone.js have a hard dependency on jQuery?
body: <p>According to backbone js website:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Backbone's only hard dependency is Underscore.js ( > 1.3.1). For RESTful persistence, history support via Backbone.Router and DOM manipulation with Backbone.View, include json2.js, and either jQuery (1.4.2) or Zepto.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I tested with code below, removing jQuery and the Backbone view throws an error.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;html&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;asda&lt;/title&gt;
  
  
      &lt;!--&lt;script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.2.min.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;--&gt;
      &lt;script src="http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/underscore.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
      &lt;script src="http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/backbone.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;            
      &lt;script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" async defer&gt;
          SearchView = Backbone.View.extend({
              initialize: function(){
                  alert("Alerts suck.");
              }
          });
  
          // The initialize function is always called when instantiating a Backbone View.
          // Consider it the constructor of the class.
          var search_view = new SearchView;
      &lt;/script&gt;   
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
  
  &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can Backbone.View and Backbone.Router work without jQuery?</p>