A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than Egypt's Great Pyramid
and 400 years older than Stonehenge, has been found -- buried in sheep
dung in a cave in Armenia.
The 5,500 year-old shoe was discovered by a team of archaeologists in a
cave in the Vayotz Dzor province of Armenia, on the Iranian and Turkish
borders. The shoe is the oldest piece of leather footwear in the world, a
fact that came as a shock to the discoverers.
"We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600-700
years old because they were in such good condition," said Dr. Ron
Pinhasi, an archaeologist with Ireland's University College Cork. "It
was only when the material was dated by the two radiocarbon laboratories
in Oxford, U.K., and in California, U.S. that we realized that the shoe
was older by a few hundred years than the shoes worn by Otzi, the
Iceman."
Otzi the Iceman was a well-preserved mummy found in an Austrian glacier
in 1991, also wearing shoes. Otzi's shoes were surprisingly complex,
said one Czech academic at the time. "I'm convinced that even 5,300
years ago, people had the equivalent of a cobbler who made shoes for
other people," Petr Hlavacek, a footwear expert from Tomas Bata
University in Zlin told The Telegraph.
The newly found cow-hide shoe -- cut and shaped from a single piece of
leather -- dates to approximately 3,500 BC and is in stunningly perfect
condition, thanks to the cool and dry conditions in the cave -- and the
fact that its floor was covered by a thick layer of sheep, dung which
acted as a solid seal over the objects. The cave also housed large
containers, many of which held well-preserved wheat and barley, apricots
and other edible plants.
The shoe contained grass, although the archaeologists were uncertain as
to whether this was to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of
the shoe -- a precursor to the modern shoe-tree perhaps? Pinhasi
couldn't determine whether the shoe belonged to a man or a woman. While
small (approximately a woman's size 7), "the shoe could well have fitted
a man from that era," he noted.
The shoe was discovered by Armenian student Diana Zardaryan in a pit that also included a broken pot and sheep's horns.
"I was amazed to find that even the shoe-laces were preserved," she
recalled. "We couldn't believe the discovery," said Gregory Areshian, a
research associate with UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, who was
at the site when the shoe was found. "The crusts had sealed the
archaeological deposits, and artifacts remained fresh dried, just like
they were put in a can," he said.
The oldest known footwear in the world, to the present time, are sandals
made of plant material, that were found in a cave in the Arnold
Research Cave in Missouri. Other contemporaneous sandals were found in
the Cave of the Warrior, Judean Desert, Israel, but these were not
directly dated, so that their age is based on various other associated
artifacts found in the cave. And those shoes were of such different
styles that the researchers believe a wide variety of styles existed at
the time.
"Other 4th millennium discoveries of shoes (Italian and Swiss Alps), and
sandals (Southern Israel) indicate that more than one type of footwear
existed during the 4th millennium BC, and that we should expect to
discover more regional variations in the manufacturing and style of
shoes where preservation conditions permit," they wrote.
But much about the shoe and the rest of the cave remains a mystery.
"We do not know yet what the shoe or other objects were doing in the
cave or what the purpose of the cave was," said Pinhasi. "We know that
there are children's graves at the back of the cave but so little is
known about this period that we cannot say with any certainty why all
these different objects were found together." The team will continue to
excavate the many chambers of the cave.
Source :- http://www.unbelievableinfo.com/2013/12/worlds-oldest-leather-shoe-discovered.html
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