Lapti

(singular, lapot’), footwear woven with bast or birch bark (sometimes leather straps were intertwined for durability). Various types of lapti were commonly worn among the Western and Eastern Slavs, as well as among the peoples of the Baltic, Volga, Kama, and Ural regions. Until the middle of the 19th century, lapti were the basic form of footwear of the peasant population of Eastern Europe. Tools used in weaving lapti have been found at Neolithic sites, indicating the extremely ancient origin of this type of footwear.