How Did Ancient Humans Survive Without Shoes?

You are standing on a driveway in bare feet in July, your car is nine steps away, and you are not going to make it without a noise. Twenty two thousand years ago, at a lake shore in what is now New Mexico, adults, teenagers and small children walked across wet mud and left footprints that dried and got buried, and every one of them was barefoot for life. Modern paleoanthropology and evolutionary biomechanics have measured what that took, and the popular version is wrong twice over: the barefoot foot was no dead leather pad, and the shoe was not invented because the ground was sharp. It was invented for the cold, about 40,000 years ago, and we know because of little toes. What You Will Learn in This Video: 27% Thicker, Zero Loss - a 2019 Harvard study in Nature measured 103 people in Kenya and Boston and found habitually barefoot heels carry 27% thicker calluses, 31% at the ball of the foot, with no loss of sensitivity to vibration at 30 or 200 Hz The Cushion Inversion - the same study found a cushioned shoe cuts the impact loading rate fourfold and multiplies the total force impulse of the step threefold, and the authors state the skeletal consequences are unknown Dated By Your Little Toes - Erik Trinkaus of Washington University measured bending strength in Pleistocene toe bones: a sole kills the gripping job of the lesser toes, so they thin while the big toe stays robust 40,000 Years, From a Cave Near Beijing - Tianyuan 1, dated to about 40,300 years ago, has the most gracile middle toes of any Pleistocene human except Sunghir 1, pushing habitual footwear 35,000 years earlier than any surviving shoe The Bill Nobody Mentions - the WHO puts soil-transmitted worm infection at about 1.5 billion people, 24% of everyone alive, with hookworm entering primarily through bare feet, and podoconiosis at 3.3% of 51,017 adults surveyed in northern Ethiopia 72% Land On the Heel - 38 Daasanach adults in Kenya who have never worn shoes, filmed over 133 running trials, mostly heel strike, which dismantles the barefoot running orthodoxy If you have ever failed to cross your own driveway, this one is about your feet. Like, subscribe, and tell me in the comments the last time you walked barefoot on purpose. Chapters: 0:00 A driveway, and a lake shore in New Mexico 1:21 Twenty six bones and a spring 2:14 Why a foot has a spring in it at all 3:01 The callus myth 3:29 What 103 feet actually measured 4:52 What the cushion really does 5:33 How do you date a shoe that rotted? 5:56 The little toe method 7:28 Forty thousand years, from two toe bones 8:25 The oldest shoe on Earth 9:01 Sagebrush sandals and Otzi's boots 9:35 The shoe is cold-weather equipment 10:53 The bill: 1.5 billion 11:35 The disease only bare feet get 12:35 Why barefoot runners land on the heel 13:32 The answer 14:27 How sure we actually are 15:24 Tomorrow, four seconds Subscribe:    / @mindwire-yt   Business: mindwire.yt@gmail.com SOURCES: Bennett et al. (2021). Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum. Science. Pigati et al. (2023). Independent age estimates resolve the controversy of ancient human footprints at White Sands. Science. Ker, Bennett, Bibby, Kester & Alexander (1987). The spring in the arch of the human foot. Nature. Bramble & Lieberman (2004). Endurance running and the evolution of Homo. Nature. Holowka et al. (2019). Foot callus thickness does not trade off protection for tactile sensitivity during walking. Nature. Trinkaus (2005). Anatomical evidence for the antiquity of human footwear use. Journal of Archaeological Science. Trinkaus & Shang (2008). Anatomical evidence for the antiquity of human footwear: Tianyuan and Sunghir. Journal of Archaeological Science. Pinhasi et al. (2010). First direct evidence of Chalcolithic footwear from the Near Eastern highlands. PLOS ONE. Fort Rock Cave sandals, excavated by Luther Cressman, University of Oregon, 1938; dating reviewed by Thomas Connolly. World Health Organization (2023). Soil-transmitted helminth infections, fact sheet, 18 January 2023. Molla, Tomczyk, Amberbir, Tamiru & Davey (2012). Podoconiosis in East and West Gojam Zones, Northern Ethiopia. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Hatala, Dingwall, Wunderlich & Richmond (2013). Variation in foot strike patterns during running among habitually barefoot populations. PLOS ONE. #ancienthumans #barefoot #anthropology #humanevolution #archaeology