World’s Oldest Leather Shoe Is Incredibly Well-Preserved

Despite its age of 5,500 years, this “astonishingly modern” shoe has been stunningly preserved by sheep dung and aridity.

The oldest known leather shoe was found in a cave in Armenia. Image credit: Gregory Areshian
An 5,500-year-old leather shoe was found in excellent condition in the Areni-1 cave located in Armenia’s Vayots Dzor province. The one-piece leather-hide shoe is the oldest piece of leather footwear known to archaeologists.

Made from a single piece of cowhide, the shoe is laced with a leather cord along seams at the front and back and was probably tailor-made for the right foot of its owner. It is about as big as a current women’s size seven (U.S.), but its owner could as well have been a man – we just don’t know enough about the feet of people who lived in this region back then to be able to tell for sure.

One thing is certain though: shoes made with this technique today (that would be labelled “whole cut”) are extremely expensive.