The history of shoes
In looking at the history of shoes, you might expect a more or less steady evolution from a simple foot wrapping in primitive times, to the styles we see today. Instead, there are some interesting twists and turns along the way, long periods when nothing seemed to change much, and other periods when footwear design took some very strange directions indeed.
One thing that becomes apparent when studying the history of shoes, is that with the exception of trying to do something to protect the soles of the feet from rocks and thorns, not too much attention was given to actual comfort.
Pharaohs vs Common man
The Pharaohs wore fancy sandals while the common man had to go barefoot. The design of the sandals probably made wearing them much more uncomfortable than going barefoot. The common man had the last laugh there, though he might not have realized it.
Things didn’t get a whole lot better until late in the 19th century when someone apparently took a closer look at the human foot and decided something needed to be done to improve the footwear design and production. But we’ll get into that a bit later.
The beginning of the history of shoes is, as they say, lost in the mists of time. Cave drawings and discovering of long-dead individuals preserved in peat bogs or trapped in ice; indicate the use of foot wrappings of one kind or another many thousands of years ago.
Primitive man may not have been advanced technologically but he wasn’t stupid either and someone realized in early times that there was a better way to go about than with bare feet. So, we can’t really say who invented shoes. They just sort of evolved through the centuries. What is amazing is how long it took the “sophisticated” modern man to get things right.
The Beginning Of Sandals And Clogs
The invention of sandals is often attributed to the Egyptians, and the clogs to the Japanese and Chinese, but many ancient cultures likely wore some variation of one or the other. The ancient Egyptian sandals however might be the oldest shoe design still used today.
The Egyptians started with sandals constructed from papyrus but eventually discovered that better and more durable sandals could be constructed of leather. As mentioned above, the wearing of sandals was for the most part constrained to the ruling classes.
One thing about the sandals that the Egyptians didn’t get quite right was that the thong was placed in the center of the front part of the sole. This was fine if your big toe were located in the same place, which of course it isn’t. But out of stubbornness, the Egyptians continued to make sandals the same way for some centuries.
This practice of not getting things quite right as far as hoes were concerned would continue through the centuries in other countries and other cultures.
The Native Americans Got It Right
At about the same time, no one knows for certain exactly when the history of shoes timeline is rather fuzzy here, people in the northern climates developed the moccasin shoe, which in the really cold places included a leather piece around the ankle, tied by a string.
Credit the Eskimos, Lapps, and Native Americans with that. It would be a while before the rest of the world came up with anything to match the design of the moccasin, still, one of the most comfortable footwear you can wear.
Shoes? No Service
Meanwhile further south, the ancient Greeks took up the idea of wearing sandals and began to design some beautiful variations. The talent the Greeks had in the arts and architectural design also became evident in their production of sandals.
Sandals were not worn indoors, not considered to be in good taste. In ancient Greece, you might not be served in a cafe if you were caught with your sandals on. Times have changed! Where the Greeks focused on attractive design in their sandals, the Romans designed sandals for more practical uses, like marching from conquest to conquest.
The Romans did make a couple of small advances. The common man in Greece still went barefoot for the most part, wherein Rome the common man wore very plain sandals, while the powerful and wealthy wore very expensive and colorful sandals.
Everyone still took their sandals off when going indoors, however, but one enterprising Roman came up with the idea of house slippers, more appropriately banquet slippers, which were meant for indoor use. Now you could attend a fancy banquet and everyone would not be in bare feet.
Sandals continued to be worn into the Middle Ages with a refinement here and a refinement there, and over a period of time began to look more like what we call shoes today.
A major advance occurred with the invention of the turned shoe, which simply was a shoe sewn inside out and then turned outside in. With the entrance of the turned shoe, all that remained was the invention of a proper sole and heel, but that took a while.
A wild Idea in history of shoes
In the history of shoes, the pointed toe goes all the way back to ancient Egypt, though the function of the pointed toe has never been quite explained. Pharaoh seemed to think the pointed sandal was pretty cool, as long as he had the most-pointed and others had lesser pointed sandals.
The Pointed Toe Shoes
This idea really took off in the Middle Ages in Europe where pointed shoes became quite the rage. The longer, the better, approaching the ridiculous. Court jesters and other free spirits even tied bells on the tips of the points. You can see these at times in old paintings or prints from the time.
The Church even got involved, becoming upset when some started wearing the bells on their toes inside the cathedrals. So pointed toes were discouraged to some extent but never discontinued and are still present today.
Almost as ridiculous was the so-called Duck Bill shoe, introduced in the late 15th century. This was the opposite of the pointed shoe. The Duck Bill was a wide shoe with the uppers often made of fancy silks or cloth.
When you wear a shoe made of expensive material, more is better, in this case, wider became better, to the point where people began to walk rather strangely. These shoes were even wider than clown’s shoes of this day and age.
The next phase of European shoemaking introduced a narrower and more practical shoe, some with pointed toes naturally. The 15th century was not only noted for the Duck Bill, but also for the introduction of the clog. This wasn’t a truly new invention; clogs had been worn in Asia for centuries, just not in Europe.
Neither sandals, pointed shoes, nor the Duck Bill was particularly good to wear in snow or in the mud. So the next evolutionary step involved the sole of the shoe, in this case, a very thick sole.
High Heels Enter The Scene
All this time, women’s shoes were also evolving, a bit more practical for sure. Up until the 16th century, women’s shoes were not much different from men’s; they were in general quite plain and functional.
By the 16th century, high heels began to come into vogue. The stiletto heel, while basically a 20th-century innovation, had its counterpart 400 years ago with the very high heel.
Women also began wearing thicker soled shoes to gain a little height, but eventually, the sight of petite ladies clomping around the house in heavy clogs must have been too much, and high heels became the sole means of gaining an inch or two in height (men wore high heels as well, especially the very short ones like King Louis XIV of France, who apparently got tired of always being the shortest guy in the room).
A Major Milestone In The History Of Shoes
By the beginning of the 18th century, women were binding their feet and lacing them very tight to make their feet appear smaller. The history of shoes that were usually uncomfortable continued.
It was during the 19th century however that thing really begins to happen as far as the history of shoes is concerned.
Then, in 1818 something quite revolutionary happened. Someone at the end of the day, probably with the usual sore feet to note of something that amazingly no one had apparently noticed before. What this person observed was that his right foot was different from his left foot, a mirror image of sorts.
Yet, his two shoes were identical, there is no right shoe or left shoe. Up until that fateful moment, shoes had been made with size taken into consideration, but given a pair of shoes, either shoe could be placed on either foot.
Apparently, if you purchased a pair of new shoes, you would walk in them about 50 miles until they were broken in, or your feet were broken in, whichever came first! So, all of a sudden, wearing shoes just got a little more comfortable.
The pattern or outline of the sole is called the last, and now we had a right last and a left last to build a pair of shoes around, and not just a single last.
History of shoes: From Black To Brown
Since that time, men’s shoes have remained basically the same in many respects. For most of the 19th century and a good part of the 20th, the history of shoes was like the history of the Model-T Ford. You could have any color as long as the color was black.
In the 20th century, we made the bold step to brown shoes, and later to other colors as well. Still black or brown are generally the colors of choice. The production of shoes moved from handcrafted to mass production during the 19th century.
Elias Howe’s invention of the sewing machine played a major role here as a few years later, another inventor took Howe’s invention and adapted it to work with leather. Other specialized machines followed so that shoes could be produced by the hundreds or even thousands per day, instead of the one to two pairs that a shoemaker could produce.
We End Up Almost Where We Started!
In the 19th and 20th centuries, women’s shoes were produced in a wide variety of styles, and both men’s and women’s shoes were made for specific uses.
The discovery by Goodyear of vulcanized rubber eventually led to the rubber sole and heel, and with the addition of a canvas top a whole new style of shoes, the sneaker, came into being.
Today we have shoes and boots for hiking, climbing, and skiing, the sneaker has evolved into the running shoe, the cross trainer, and other specialized athletic shoes.
Not much more than 100 years ago the shoelace was invented, replacing the buckle. But among our favorite shoes remain the sandal or Flip Flop, and the moccasin.
In the history of shoes, some things have never changed all that much. These days at least, the thing is by the big toe, where it should be, and a distinction is made between the right foot and the left foot, as it should be.
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