An Armenian Cave Was Home To The Oldest Leather Shoe In The World

May 2024 · 1 minute read

As BBC News goes on to note, the Areni-1 shoe (pictured) was discovered in a cave long known to have been a ritual site from the Neolithic period (via Atlas Obscura). Radiocarbon dating puts the shoes at around 5,500 years old, according to National Geographic. The footwear was remarkably well preserved, likely due to the cool and dry conditions in the cave and that the floor of the cave was covered in layers and layers of sheep excrement built-up over the millennia. The shoe was entombed underneath, according to the BBC News report.

In modern terms, the shoe was something like a woman's size 7 (U.S.), but it could have also been worn by a man from the period. Ötzi, for example, who lived later, was around 5 feet 2 inches tall, per Britannica. On the age of the shoe, archaeologist Dr. Ron Pinhasi an archaeologist from the University College Cork in Ireland, who co-authored the Areni-1 study said (via BBC News), "We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600-700 years old because they were in such good condition," and it was only after the material was dated by two radiocarbon laboratories that it was determined the shoe was older than the shoes worn by Ötzi the Iceman.

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