The fact that feet are so sensitive makes me think our earliest ancestors were mowing lawns.
I think our feet are as sensitive as we allow them to become.
I grew up in southern california. In summertime my brothers and I rarely wore shoes, and a little more frequently wore flip flops, but usually our feet were bare.
One brother and I use to run - just for running - on our neighborhood streets, barefoot, on asphault (the only sneekers I owned were saved for PE class at school or for Little League.
Our feet were so black my mom made us wear socks to bed.
It was a very long time into adulthood before walking on any surface registered a complaint from my feet.
I think our feet are only as much in need of shoes as we have trained them to be.
Well obviously any human who was smart enough to travel any distance on foot would protect those feet from possibly damaging terrain, since those feet were his only means of transportation-duh!
You only have “sensitive feet” if you protect/sensitize the soles of them all the time by wearing shoes. As a ranch kid, I only wore shoes/boots when working outdoors in the barn and other horse/livestock areas-obvious reasons-or in the pasture where the stickers, cactus and mesquite thorns were. In the yard or anywhere else, it was bare feet-and still is. I wear boots-steel toes- at work and other public places-but at home I only wear them when doing outdoor work that involves nails, screws, heavy things that can fall on feet, etc. Otherwise it is bare feet, Winter and Summer-I do wear socks indoors if the floor is really, really cold in Winter-or outdoors if the ground has ice on it and I’m going to be out there for awhile. Maybe I carry the all natural thing a bit far-but I can walk on hot ground without difficulty-same for cold ground-and grassburrs do not penetrate my feet much at all. The soles of my feet do have very thick skin and feel like sandpaper, and I don’t get pedicures, either...
[singing] Had to thank old Miss Mort for schooling a failure...