The oldest leather shoe in the world

Cool dry conditions in a cave in Armenia helped preserve the world's oldest leather shoe, but sheep dung lining the floor also helped, writes DICK AHLSTROMScience Editor

SHEEP DUNG may be the secret ingredient that helped archaeologists working in Armenia unearth the oldest leather shoe yet discovered. The shoe emerged from the muck in near perfect condition – laces intact – despite lying hidden in a cave for some 5,500 years.

So well preserved was it the research team thought the shoe must be no more than 600 or 700 years old, stated Dr Ron Pinhasi of University College Cork's department of archaeology. Radio carbon dating tests proved otherwise however, giving the team a new world record. Details of the find were released yesterday evening by the online scientific journal Plos One.

Its age makes it 1,000 years older that the great pyramid of Giza and 300 years older than the Newgrange passage graves in Co Meath, says Pinasi, who was lead author in the report and co-director of the excavation site. Other authors in the paper included scientists from Armenia, the US, Israel and Oxford.

The shoe was made of a single piece of cow-hide meant to wrap around the owner’s foot when tightened with the laces.

Pinhasi pointed out that the design was very similar to the pampooties that were worn years ago by Aran Islanders. The Armenian shoe also matches a design seen in later periods and recovered from archaeological digs across Europe, he adds.

“It is not known whether the shoe belonged to a man or woman,” he said. Although at European size 37 it protected a diminutive foot, it could have been worn by a man from that era as people were generally smaller then than today.

Unusually it was stuffed full of grass and the researchers have been left to wonder about this. One theory holds the grass provided either cushioning or extra warmth for the wearer, while another suggests it served the same purpose as a modern shoe-tree to hold the shape of the leather when stored away. “It is more likely to preserve its shape rather than for warmth because the grass was not squashed down,” Pinhasi suggests.

The cave is in the Vayotz Dzor province of Armenia, near its border with Iran, Turkey and the Nakhichevanian Autonomous Republic. It shows signs of habitation from more than 6,000 years ago right up until the medieval period 600 years ago, Pinhasi says. The cave itself is divided into a series of natural “rooms” that spread back into the cave. The shoe was located near the front of the cave by Armenian PhD student Diana Zardaryan of the Institute of Archaeology, Armenia, he says.

The team assumed the shoe must have been medieval given its state of preservation, although they were working in cave soil layers that were much older. It was not until they got the carbon- dating results from Oxford and from the University of California Irvine that they knew just how old the shoe was, he says.

The shoe was in a pit along with a broken pot and wild goat horns. “We do not know yet what the shoe or other objects were doing in the cave or what the purpose of the cave was,” Pinhasi says.

And the cave had much more to reveal. The skeletons of several children were discovered in a room further back into the cave. They were probably young females and there were no signs of either disease or violence on the bones, he says.

“They were secondary burials. They were buried initially and then many years later the bones were excavated and reburied in the cave,” Pinhasi says.

They tried to extract DNA to “sex” the bones, as it is difficulty to separate male from female in adolescent skeletal remains. Carbon-dating indicated the bones were about 5,000 years old, perhaps 500 to 600 years older than the shoe.

The Armenian cave’s cool dry conditions helped to create a stable environment ideal for preservation of organic materials, but the researchers believe there was another contributor to this. The floor of the cave was covered by a thick layer of sheep dung that sealed over what lay beneath.

The find now ranks as the oldest leather shoe yet found but the oldest known footwear is much older. Shoes discovered in a cave in Missouri, made of fibrous plant material, could be 8,000 years old.

Pinhasi departs today for the latest stage of the excavation, which will run from July through October. His work in the region has received support from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences and from Science Foundation Ireland. The main funding for the project comes from National Geographic and from a number of US-based foundations.

Twitter: @dickahlstrom