A 5,500-year-old leather shoe has been found in a cave in Armenia. The shoe – 1,000 years older than Giza’s Great Pyramid and 400 years older than Stonehenge – is perfectly preserved and was found complete with shoelaces. It is believed to be the oldest example of enclosed leather footwear, out-dating the shoes worn by Otzi the Iceman by a few hundred years.
The shoe is sole-less, made out of a single piece of cow hide and was shaped to the wearer’s right foot. It contained grass, which might have served to either keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe. It is not known whether the shoe – 24.5cm long and a European size 37 – belonged to a man or a woman, though it would have been ideal for a male of that era.
The shoe is similar to the ‘pampootsies’ worn until the 1950s on Ireland’s Aran Islands. “In fact, enormous similarities exist between manufacturing technique and style of this shoe and those found across Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse geographic region,” said Dr Ron Pinhasi of Cork University.