The world’s oldest leather shoe was discovered in Armenia. Archaeologists have unearthed the world’s oldest leather shoe in a cave in southeastern Armenia. This leather shoe, which is five thousand five hundred years old, was made a thousand years before the three pyramids of Egypt and is very well preserved.
The researchers say that this shoe is made of a piece of cow leather and its sewing shape shows that it was supposed to be completely the shape of the owner’s foot.
Details of the new discovery are published in the journal Plos One.
The inside of the leather shoe is full of grass; Although archaeologists are unsure about the role of grass, they speculate that the shoemaker may have intended to keep his foot warm by filling the inside of the shoe with grass to prevent it from becoming disfigured.
The researchers also acknowledged in their report that they were not sure if the leather shoe was worn by a woman or a man, but it was relatively small anyway, and by today’s standards is about the same size as a size 38 women’s shoe.
This shoelace was found in Areni-1 Cave, near the Armenian-Iranian-Turkish border.
Archaeologists say that the reason for the relative health of this leather shoe, despite its age, is the conditions inside the cave. The air inside the cave does not change much, it is cool and also dry.
They added that another thing about the site of the discovery of this world’s oldest shoe is that the floor of the cave is covered with a layer of sheep waste.
A layer of sheepskin, like a strong insulator, prevents damage to the shoe and preserves it for several thousand years. “At first we thought this pair of shoes and other items we found in the cave were 600 to 700,” said Dr. Ron Pinassi, one of the world’s oldest shoe explorers and a professor at University College Cork Ireland. They are years old because they were in very good condition. “When two radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford, England, and California, USA, estimated the age of their materials, we found that the shoe was several hundred years older than the shoes worn by people of the Ice Age.”
Among the ancient objects discovered in this cave are a variety of wooden containers, some of which contain wheat, barley, apricots and other edible vegetables.
The sandals, discovered during a study by Arnold in Missouri, are 2,000 to 2,500 years older than those found in Arnie-1 Cave. Of course, these sandals are made of plant fibers.
