Dedicated to the collection, preservation and study of plant fiber woven footwear in human migration, settlement and civilization.

In 2002, I realized the trip of a lifetime when my travel companions and I visited the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar in Xinjiang Province, P.R. China. I saw with my own eyes and through my camera lens the extraordinary human diversity present at one of the great crossroads of early human migrations, Central Asia. I cannot forget walking down the dusty streets of this oasis town and seeing Mediterranean faces that would have been unremarkable among the street faces in Athens and Rome! These were mixed with the faces of Han Chinese, Mongolians, Kazaks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks and Uighurs. Traveling outside of Kashgar, I saw the hostile terrain of the early migration routes, passes through the high Pamirs, the Tibetan Plateau and the forbidding and lethal lobe of the Gobi Desert known as the Taklamakan Desert. How did humans survive those extraordinary treks?

Several years later, I created an honors section of an undergraduate course, Gene Expression, which I taught at the University of Connecticut. About a half dozen mostly senior honors students and I met during lunch once a week to discuss readings in a selected book. The first book we discussed was “The Journey of Man” by Spencer Wells, and the second year we read “DNA, the secret of life” by James D. Watson. These choices were prompted by my growing interest in the genetics of human migrations. Our discussions were broad-ranging and exciting.

Then, my colleague Helen Neumann and I incorporated the topic of early human migrations into a writing course for Molecular and Cell Biology majors. Discussions of the genetic evidence for early migrations along with the inferred geographic routes prompted a fundamental question. What did they wear on their feet that allowed humans to cross terrain like I saw in western China? Could the answer be as simple as straw sandals? This is how my interest in woven shoes and sandals all started. The end is not in sight! In time I hope to “weave” the strands of science, art, geography and history together that currently exist on this web site mostly as isolated threads. First and foremost, this site is a celebration of an ancient handcraft born of necessity that has emerged in modern times as a successful, earth-friendly cottage industry.

Larry Hightower
Curator, The Straw Sandals Project