What's Older Than the Pyramids and Smells Worse Than a Mummy?

bluezink · Post time 11-6-2010 10:55 PM

5500 Year Old Shoe

discovered in the Chalcolithic age deposits at Areni-1, a dry cave in in Vayots Dzor province of Armenia. The dry conditions of the cave have led to fabulous preservation, and the cave includes well-preserved occupations between the Neolithic and late Middle Ages.

The shoe pictured here was discovered in a Chalcolithic (Copper Age) level, next to some animal bones (a red deer scapula, two horns of a wild goat and a fish vertebra), some reeds and ~40 potsherds dated to the Late Chalcolithic period.
The shoe, of processed cowhide, was made to fit a person's right foot. It is 24.5 cm long, 7.6-10 cm wide (European size 37; US size 7 women), and was made from a single piece of leather wrapped around the sole of the foot and laced together at the top. It was completely stuffed with grass, perhaps to maintain its shape. Like a mocassin, the shoe doesn't have either a constructed sole or vamp; its construction is probably closest to a pampootie, an ancient form of shoe thought to have been used by the Vikings and still made in the Aran Islands of Ireland. Modern pampooties have a very brief period of use, lasting only about one month before they fall apart.
Radiocarbon dates from the shoe leather and grass inside it suggest it was made between 3627-3377 cal BC. The Areni-1 shoe is not the oldest example of footwear in the world--that belongs to sandals from Cougar Mountain and Catlow Caves in Oregon (~10,500-9200 cal BP); and some evidence suggests that we humans started wearing footwear perhaps 40,000 years ago. But, Areni-1's shoe is the oldest complete shoe specimen we have; and it is slightly older than either Otzi the Iceman's soft leather footwear or a moccasin recovered from Arnold Research Cave in Missouri.

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