How often do we pull our mind from the complexities of every day life to consider socks? Not very often. If we do focus mental energy on socks, it’s merely, which ones should I wear? Or, which ones should I buy? No one really stops to ponder the origin of the sock, but I bet you are now.
The first known socks go way, way back to the stone age, when cave-dwellers would presumably wear animal skins, tied to their ankles for warmth…imagine wearing that into the office.
Forward wind to 8thcentury BC and the Greeks were donning ‘piloi’, socks made from matted animal hairs. Whereas the romans wrapped their feet in leather strips but were wearing woven fabric socks that pulled over the foot, like we do now, in 2ndcentury A.D!
The earliest knit socks have to be credited to the Egyptians, they were found in tombs dating between the 3rdand 6thcenturies A.D.
1000 A.D saw socks, or at that point in time stockings, become a symbol of status in European nobility.
The 16thcentury introduced socks, as we know them, kind of, with the invention of the knitting machine. Ever since then manufacturers have been changing socks to adhere to the styles of the era, now with endless possibilities of patterns and colours, and even embroidered personalisation’s.