Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
It's worth considering surfaces here. The vast majority of relevant human evolution took place in central Africa*, where the ground was generally comparatively warm and soft. On the temperature side, there are surfaces that can get way too hot for barefoot walking (asphalt comes to mind, but sand can get pretty bad too in places and that's been a problem for much longer), along with fun stuff like snow. On the hardness side, asphalt and concrete are ubiquitous today. Neither are what we evolved to walk on.
That last part was another part of the argumentation AFAICT. Or they were just trying to sell those weird shoes that fit and are shaped close to the feet.

I was really just saying walking might not be nicer now than previously necessarily. Be damned if I know how they managed without a good pair of winter boots in Ye Olden Tymes but clearly they must have. At least as long as they weren't soldiers on a campaign who seldom seem to have had decent footware.