It is a common fact that the earth isn’t exactly a comfortable planet to walk on. It
is often muddy, rocky and uneven and even on an even surface, there could always be
a hedgehog hiding. So… seeing that necessity is the mother of all inventions it was high
time to start protecting our precious feet. Lo and behold friends, I am Valon and this
is the History of shoes!
According to Merriem Webster, a shoe is defined as an outer covering for the human foot typically
having a thick or stiff sole with an attached heel and an upper part of lighter material
(such as leather). The usage of footwear started astoundingly early. Scientists have deduced
from observing the reduced thickness of the smaller toes, which could result from usage
of footwear, that approximately 40000 to 26000 years ago people have started using footwear.
And since footwear in the beginning were probably made from perishable materials unfortunately
there is no surviving footwear that date from that time in our collective history. However,
in Fort Rock in the state of Oregon were found the oldest surviving footwear, sandals. These
sandals were made from the bark of the sagebrush shrub. With radiocarbon dating they were shown
to be around 10000 years old and it just goes to show that even THEN people didn’t really
have a sense of style.
Thankfully there is a much hipper looking surviving shoe that is made of leather. This
cow-hide shoe dates back to 3500 BC ( **quick maff** around 5500 years old) and is in perfect
condition considering the age, talk about quality. It was found in Armenia and initially
the researchers thought that the shoe was 600 years old because of the remarkable condition,
only later did the radiocarbon dating refute their primary suspicions. This shoe currently
is exhibited in the History Museum of Armenia.
This might come as a surprise but flip flops aren’t as new as one might think. These
precursors to the flip flops date back to pictures of them in ancient Egyptian murals
from 4000 BC. The Egyptian flip flops were made from papyrus and palm leaves.
It’s worth a mention that many people during ancient times didn’t wear footwear at all,
apparently, they were seen as unnecessary, this was pretty common in the ancient Greek
world. It is said that the first marathoner did his run on bare feet and some think that
even Alexander the Great may have conquered the known world with barefoot soldiers.
With the trampling of the ancient Greek world by the Roman boot this all changed. Although
it is known that the Romans adopted a lot of the ancient Greek culture, they also deemed
that running around barefoot was a step in the wrong direction. In Roman times clothing
was a symbol of power and footwear was a necessity of a person living in a civilized world, although
the slaves did go around barefoot.
During the middle ages popular with peasants in the Catalonian region as early as the 13th
century there was a common casual shoe called Espadrille. This is a a sandal with braided
jute soles and a fabric upper portion, they also include laces that tie around the ankle.
Moving on to these funny shoes that you’ve probably seen in movies or video games, they
are called Crakowes, after the city of Krakow in Poland. Surprisingly enough these long-toed
shoes first appear in archeological records of the 12th century but they never really
caught on until the 15th though. These shoes were pretty controversial though especially
among the clergy, one anonymous monk of Evesham in England recorded in 1394 that "With this
queen (Anne of Bohemia who married king Richard II) there came from Bohemia into England those
accursed vices half a yard in length, thus it was necessary for them to be tied to the
shin with chains of silver before they could walk with them."
Another person the author of a Latin book called Eulogium Historiarum described the
men of this period as wearing “points on their shoes as long as your finger that are
called crakowes; more suitable as claws... for demons than as ornaments for men”
In 1368 the king of France Charles the Vth issued an edict banning their construction
and use in Paris while in England in 1463 King Edward the IVth passed a law restricting
anyone who is not an aristocrat from wearing these shoes over the length of two inches,
talk about overcompensation.
The 15th century was really a creative time and in the Ottoman empire there was a new
type of shoe invented called the Chopine. Chopines were ridiculously high platform shoes
and they were popular among women in Venice all throughout the Renaissance period the
height of which could reach up to 50 cm (20 inches). And so, the government once again
had to intervene, and with good reason too. Venice passed a law that limited the height
to just meager 3 inches, but to no avail as everyone ignored this law. Even royalty began
to wear chopines including men and a person with authority or wealth was often referred
to as “well heeled”. The chopines are regarded as one of the precursors to today’s
high heeled shoes.
Until the 19th century, shoemaking was a traditional handicraft, but by the century's end, the
process had been almost completely mechanized, with production occurring in large factories.
Despite the obvious economic gains of mass-production, the factory system produced shoes without
the individual differentiation that the traditional shoemaker was able to provide.
Since the mid-20th Century, advances in rubber, plastics, synthetic cloth, and industrial
adhesives have allowed manufacturers to create shoes that stray considerably from traditional
crafting techniques. Soles, which were once hand-stitched on, are now more often machine
stitched or simply glued on. Many of these newer materials, such as rubber and plastics,
have made shoes less biodegradable. It is estimated that most mass-produced shoes require
1000 years to degrade, it won’t be hard to find Nike sneakers in archeological sites
in the future. Onwards to the year 1892, when the U.S. Rubber
Company introduced the first rubber-soled shoes in the country, sparking a surge in
demand and production. The first basketball shoes were designed by Spalding as early as
1907. The U.S. market for sneakers grew steadily as young boys lined up to buy sneakers endorsed
by football player Jim Thorpe and Converse All Stars endorsed by basketball player Chuck
Taylor, this tradition of shoe endorsing athletes lives on even today.
Anyway, over the past five years, the Global Footwear Manufacturing industry has declined
by -0.6% to but still it reached an outstanding revenue of $208bn in 2018. In the
same timeframe, the number of businesses has grown by 1.2% and the footwear industry is
here and it’s here to stay.
I would like to thank you for your attention, hit the subscribe button if you like my content
or just like this video if you actually liked it. Leave suggestions in the comments and
please do provide feedback, I appreciate all kinds of constructive criticism. Till the
next video my friends.