Discovered Under Sheep Dung – The World’s Oldest Shoe!

Did you see it on the news yesterday? It’s being reported everywhere, and of course, it’s so bizarrely interesting, it also deserves a place on Bit Rebels. In a nutshell, the oldest shoe has been discovered. I know, it’s completely random and a little silly, but check this thing out! It looks nuts. Archaeologists date this shoe back 5,500 years!

I see from the design, cavemen (or women) were not very fashion conscious back then. The shoe is a woman’s size 4 but since people had smaller feet back then, it could have been the shoe of a man also.

There was a piece of grass found inside the shoe, which dates back to the same age. Because of the place it was found, in an Armenian cave, it is preserved surprisingly well. The fact it was buried under a bunch of sheep poop probably helped preserve it also. As you can see, it is a moccasin style shoe with laces.

People are comparing this to an L.L. Bean walking shoe. Um, I’ve purchased a lot of things from L.L. Bean, and I’ve never seen anything that looks like this in the catalog! :)

[via NYTimes, Telegraph]