The history of footwear dates back thousands of years, with ancient shoes being discovered all around the world. From 5,500-year-old leather shoes in Armenia to 6,200-year-old grass sandals in Spain, humans have been wearing shoes for millennia. However, pinpointing the exact time when shoes were invented is challenging due to the breakdown of materials used to make them over time.
The oldest known shoes, a pair of 10,400-year-old sandals found in Fort Rock Cave in Oregon, provide insight into the early footwear of our ancestors. These sandals, woven from sagebrush bark and other fibers, were finely made with a flat sole and foot cover. Similar footwear has been unearthed at various sites in the northern and western Great Basin region of the United States.
Researchers have also discovered evidence of even older footwear, such as hide moccasins worn by the Spirit Cave Mummy in Nevada, which dates back about 10,600 years. Additionally, fossil tracks on a beach in South Africa suggest that humans may have been wearing shoes as far back as 150,000 years ago, although no direct fossil traces of these shoes have been found.
In a 2023 study, researchers examined the fossil tracks in South Africa and compared them to the sandals used by the modern Indigenous San people in the Kalahari Desert. By crafting various types of shoes and creating trackways on moist, moderately soft sand, they were able to determine that an open, hard-sole design best matched the ancient fossil tracks.
The discovery of ancient footwear provides valuable insights into the lives of our ancestors and the importance of protecting their feet from injury and temperature extremes. While the exact origins of shoes remain a mystery, the evidence suggests that humans have been wearing some form of footwear for tens of thousands of years.
Charles Q. Choi, a contributing writer for Live Science and Space.com, explores the fascinating history of human origins and astronomy, as well as physics, animals, and general science topics. With a Master of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida, Charles has traveled to every continent on Earth, experiencing unique adventures along the way.
