Before Shoes: How Humans Were Built to Walk Barefoot

What did we do before shoes? For most of human history, we were barefoot - roaming around without anything to protect our feet. Was it painful for our early ancestors? And when did the idea of shoes first begin?

Taking you back in time to 300,000 years ago, I explore how early humans would’ve got by without shoes, developing thick calluses on their feet and strong muscles and tendons. I look at the early evolution of the shoe, starting with leather foot coverings, moving onto sagebrush sandals.

Then we move to the era when shoes became a sign of status and ridiculous fashions set in. Before leaping to the industrial revolution, and the democratization of shoe-wearing thanks to the invention of rubber.

And, as barefoot shoes and minimalist footwear begin to grow in popularity, I explain what makes our feet so amazing, and how we’re starting to return to our roots.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

03:58 Animal hide moccasins 

05:43 Fort Rock sandals: The first shoes

07:22 When shoes became status

09:26 The rise of modern shoes

11:48 The return to barefoot

15:11 The hygiene of going barefoot

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Picture Attribution (Fort Rock sandals)

Ian Poellet, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons