IT'S the world's oldest shoe. The perfectly preserved 5,500-year-old footwear was found under the floor of a cave by an international team of researchers led by Irish academic Dr Ron Pinhasi.
The leather shoe, found in Armenia, dates back to around 3,500 BC. It is made of a single piece of cow hide and was shaped to fit the wearer's foot.
When excavated, the shoe was found to contain grass, but archaeologists are uncertain as to whether this was to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe.
The stable, cool and dry conditions in the cave resulted in exceptional preservation of the various objects that were found, which included large containers, many of which held well-preserved wheat and barley, apricots and other edible plants.
The preservation was also helped by the fact that the floor of the cave was covered by a thick layer of sheep dung, which acted as a solid seal over the objects.
Experts say the shoe looks strikingly similar to "pampooties", which were shoes worn on the Aran Islands and in the Scottish Highlands up to the 1950s.
"It's particularly special to find an item that belonged to people from another age," Dr Pinhasi told the Irish Independent last night.
The 41-year-old academic is from Israel originally but has been living in Cork since 2007, when he took up his current position with University College, Cork.
"We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600- to 700-years-old because they were in such good condition," he said.
A piece of grass from the shoe was also sent to the University of Oxford to be dated.
Dr Pinhasi said it was not yet known what the shoe or other objects were doing in the cave or what the purpose of the cave was.
The shoe was discovered by Armenian PhD student Diana Zardaryan, of the Institute of Archaeology, Armenia, in a pit that also included a broken pot and wild goat horns.
The research was funded by a number of US organizations, including the National Geographic Society.
Source: Independent