When did sandals appear?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Normal 0 false false false false RU X-NONE X-NONE

Lapti - footwear made of bast, which for many centuries (according to the official chronology) was worn by the Slavic population of Eastern Europe. It is believed that the name of this shoe comes from the word "paw". In Russia, only villagers, that is, peasants, put on shoes in bast shoes. Well, the peasants made up the overwhelming population of Russia. Lapot and the peasant were almost synonymous. This is where the saying "bast shoe Russia" came from.

And indeed, even at the beginning of the 20th century, Russia was still often called a "bastard" country, attaching a shade of primitiveness and backwardness to this concept. Bast shoes have become, as it were, a kind of symbol that is included in many proverbs and sayings, they were traditionally considered the shoes of the poorest part of the population. And it is no coincidence. The entire Russian village, with the exception of Siberia and the Cossack regions, walked in bast shoes all year round.

Of course, bast shoes were woven from the bark of many deciduous trees: linden, birch, elm, oak, rakita, etc. Depending on the material, wicker shoes were called differently: birch bark, elm trees, oak trees, broomsticks. The strongest and softest in this row were considered bast bast shoes made of linden bast, and the worst were willow carpet and bast bast made from bast.

Often bast shoes were named after the number of bast strips used in weaving: five, six, seven. Winter bast shoes were usually woven at seven lyk. For strength, warmth and beauty, bast shoes were braided again, for which hemp ropes were used. For the same purpose, a leather outsole was sometimes sewn on.

Written elm bast shoes made of thin bast with a black woolen braid, which was fixed on the legs, were intended for a festive exit. For autumn-spring chores in the yard, simple high braided feet without any braid were considered more comfortable.

Shoes were woven not only from tree bark, thin roots were also used, and therefore the sandals woven from them were called rootlets. Models of bast shoes made from strips of fabric were called plaits. Bast shoes were also made from hemp rope - twigs, and even from horsehair - hairy hair. Such shoes were often worn at home or walked in them in hot weather, and bast bast shoes kept warm well in winter, and in summer they gave their feet coolness.

The technique of weaving bast shoes was also very diverse. For example, the Great Russian bast shoes, in contrast to the Belarusian and Ukrainian ones, had oblique weaving, while in the western regions they used straight weaving, or "straight lattice". If in the Ukraine and Belarus they began to weave bast shoes from the toe, then the Russian peasants did the work from the back. So the place of appearance of a particular wicker shoe can be judged by the shape and material from which it is made. Moscow models, woven from bast, are characterized by high sides and rounded toes. In the North, in particular, in Novgorod, they often made bark bast shoes with triangular toes and relatively low sides. Mordovian bast shoes, common in the Nizhny Novgorod and Penza provinces, were woven from elm bast.

Methods of weaving bast shoes - for example, in a straight cage or in an oblique, from the heel or from the toe - were different for each tribe and until the beginning of our century varied by region. So, the ancient Vyatichi preferred bast shoes of oblique weaving, the Novgorod Slovenes - too, but mostly from birch bark and with lower sides. But the glade, Drevlyans, Dregovichi, Radimichi wore bast shoes in a straight cage.

Weaving bast shoes was considered a simple job, but it required dexterity and skills. It is not for nothing that a person who is heavily drunk is even now being said that he, they say, “does not knit bast,” that is, he is not capable of elementary actions! But, "tying the bast", the man provided the whole family with shoes - then there were no special workshops for a very long time. The main tools for weaving bast shoes - kochedyks were made from animal bones or metal. Archaeologists attribute the first kochedyks to the Stone Age.

Even during the Civil War, bast shoes were the main footwear of the Red Army soldiers. There was an Extraordinary Commission on felt boots and bast shoes (CHEKVALAP), which was engaged in the preparation of footwear for the military.

When did sandals first appear in Russia?

To this seemingly simple question of the exact answer no so far.

It is believed that bast shoes are one of the most ancient types of footwear. One way or another, but bone kochedyks - hooks for weaving bast shoes - are regularly found by archaeologists and ascribed to their neolithic sites. It turns out, according to the official version, back in the Stone Age, people wove shoes using plant fibers.

However, we will give the following data:

In 1889 alone more than 25 million Russian peasants were shod in bast bast shoes. It is known that sandals wear out quickly, and only one person needed 40 pairs of them for a year. No wonder that in the same year in Russia, according to statistics, about 500 million pairs of bast shoes were made, that is, almost one and a half billion young lime trees: for one pair of bast shoes, you need to rip off (exactly rip off) the bast from 2-3 young stickies!

There were whole artels of wicker workers, which, according to surviving descriptions, were sent into the forest in whole parties. For a tithe of a linden forest, they paid up to one hundred rubles. The bast was removed with a special wooden speck, leaving a completely bare trunk. The bast was considered the best, obtained in the spring, when the first leaves began to bloom on the linden, therefore, most often such an operation destroyed the tree. Hence the expression "rip off as sticky."

Approximately 300 pairs of bast shoes were obtained from the cart. Weaved bast shoes from two to ten pairs a day, depending on experience and skill.

In the 19th century, a pair of good bast bast shoes could be bought for three kopecks, while the roughest peasant boots cost five or six rubles. For a peasant farmer, this is a lot of money, in order to collect it, it was necessary to sell a quarter of rye (one quarter was equal to almost 210 liters of bulk substances). Boots, which differed from bast shoes in convenience, beauty and durability, were inaccessible to most serfs. Even for a well-to-do peasant, boots remained a luxury; they were worn only on holidays. So they got along with bast shoes. The proverb testifies to the fragility of wicker shoes: "Go on the road, weave five sandals." In winter, the peasant wore only bast shoes for no more than ten days, and in the summer, during working hours, he trampled them in four days.

An interesting question arises. How many it took birch and bark to centuries to shoe a whole nation? Simple calculations show: if our ancestors diligently cut down trees for the bark, birch and linden forests would have disappeared even in prehistoric times. However, this did not happen. Why?

Is it because the need for "bast shoes" in Russia arose relatively recently, several hundred years ago, in connection with a sharp drop in the technological and cultural level due to external factors? Of course, many will consider that this is too indirect an argument, and, perhaps, will find their own explanation for this fact, but if you analyze all this together with such articles as "Pitched Pearls", "Renaissance rockets", "Nuclear strikes of the recent past" and some others, then the analysis of such a point of view, at least, will require reflection.

They tried to fix the difficult state of deciduous trees in Russia even in pre-revolutionary times, and according to the official version, this situation arose due to the widespread use of wood as an ornamental, everyday and industrial raw material.

Here is an example of the state's concern for forestry during the times of the Russian Empire:

In Russia until 1917, peasants and rural communities were encouraged, at the suggestion of science, by the "masters of the state" for planting forests.

For 50 acres of forest (~ 50 hectares) grown and preserved by the landowner, he was awarded a valuable prize of 500 rubles (the cost of 150-200 cows, or now 5-6 million rubles) and a gold medal. Now this amount corresponds to the cost of creating tree plantations on 42 hectares. It turns out that even then the forest officials of the Russian Empire did not take the numbers from the bulldozer, but rather knew exactly how much forest restoration costs, and, most importantly, there was a need for it.

Readers can learn more about inconsistencies in our forestry in A. Artemiev's article "I understand your age-old sadness …"

In Russian written sources, the word "bast shoe", or rather, a derivative of it - "bast shoe" is first encountered in the "Tale of Bygone Years". However, the fact that the Radziwill Chronicle and the "Tale of Bygone Years" included in it are a late forgery can be seen by watching the film "Razdivilovskaya Chronicle".

So this "bastard" question turned out to be not so simple …