5,600-year-old leather shoe found in Armenian cave

Archaeologists from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Ireland have discovered the world’s oldest leather shoe, an exquisitely preserved, 5,600-year-old woman’s size 7 lace-up, in a cave in Armenia. The shoe, 1,000 years older than the great pyramid of Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, was in such pristine condition that at first researchers thought it was just a few centuries old. It was stuffed with grass that may have been used to keep the wearer’s foot warm or that might have been to preserve the shoe’s shape for storage, the researchers reported Wednesday in the online journal PLoS One.

Both grass and shoe were well preserved, like other organic materials discovered in preliminary excavations of the cave on the border between Armenia and Iran, including winemaking apparatus complete with grapes and three human heads preserved in jars. Most such materials degrade over time; the team attributed the unusual preservation to the cave’s perennially cool temperature and low humidity and a concrete-like layer of sheep dung that sealed everything in and prevented fungi from destroying the remains.

“The conditions in the cave . . . are rather rare,” allowing preservation of artifacts from a time period for which such materials are scarce, said UCLA archaeologist Charles Stanish, who was not involved in the research. The cave, he added, is only one of at least 39 that researchers are just beginning to explore. “The potential to rewrite the early history of northern Mesopotamia is quite vast,” he said.

“The shoe itself is really interesting and cool,” added archaeologist Mitchell S. Rothman of Widener University in Chester, Penn., who was not involved in the research. “But it is just a marker of how incredibly good the preservation is at the site, which is incredibly important.”

The artifacts date from the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, when the first metal tools began appearing. “The fourth millennium is when the modern world appears — the first cities, the first kings, the first axes, the first bureaucrats, and the first international trading system,” Rothman said. Southern Iraq, where the first cities appeared, had no natural resources of its own and all the raw materials had to come from the surrounding mountains, from sites like this one.


http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/821400--5-600-year-old-leather-shoe-found-in-armenian-cave?bn=1

Whoever lived in that cave had some very eclectic tastes (and probably threw some awesome parties...)

Fascinating find!

Our Alps man wore grass-insulation.

http://home.hccnet.nl/willy.groenman/

What at first sight looked like a mass of grass and remains of leather straps proved after freeze-drying to be grass stems twisted and plaited in the form of a human foot. This `sock' was rather well preserved at the sides of the foot and round the instep, but the heel was gone. Skin remains from the shoe itself were only preserved near the toe.

The preservation of the right shoe was much better, although again the heel part was missing (Goedecker-Ciolek 1993, 101-106). What was interpreted as the `sole' was oval in form and obviously worn with the hairside inwards. Paired slits had been cut out perpendicular to the edge. Through these a leather strap, 1.5-2 cm in width, was threaded. This leather strap also went through the loops at the bottom edge of the grass `sock', thus fixing the `sock' to the outer edge of the shoe. Leather straps tied across the width at the underside probably gave a better grip on slippery rocks, ice or snow (but see also note 4).

Remind me not to get drunk and pass out in caves anymore. :)

Have they found any primitive flash bang fragments or charred human bone ? They'll be digging that stuff up forever .