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

June 10, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES

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 lace-up, in a cave in Armenia.

The shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Egypt, 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 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 three human heads preserved in jars and winemaking apparatus complete with grapes.

Most such materials degrade over time; the team attributed the unusual preservation to the cave’s perennially cool temperature and low humidity and a concretelike layer of sheep dung that sealed everything in.

Before the discovery, the oldest known footwear from Eurasia was found on Otzi, the Iceman discovered on a glacier in the Otztal Alps between Austria and Italy. Those shoes are about 5,300 years old but were in relatively poor shape.

The oldest known footwear were discovered in Missouri and are about 6,900 years old. Made from woven fibers, they also are in poor condition.