Humans wore shoes 40,000 yrs ago
2 Jul 2008, 1525 hrs IST,ANI

WASHINGTON: The first time humans put their feet inside shoes was 40,000years ago, a new anthropological research suggests.

Erik Trinkaus and Hong Shang, from Washington University in Missouri made the discovery while examining toe bones from a 40,000-year-old skeleton in a Tianyuan cave near Beijing in China.

A previous study of anatomical changes in toe bone structure had dated the use of shoes to about 30,000 years ago.

Now the dainty-toed fossil from China suggests that at least some humans were sporting protective footwear 10,000 years further back, during a time when both modern humans and Neandertals occupied portions of Europe and Asia.

Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, said the scarcity of toe bone fossils makes it hard to determine when habitual shoe wearing became widespread.

However, he noted, even Neandertals may have been strapping on sandals.

"Earlier humans, including Neanderthals, show [some] evidence of occasionally wearing shoes," National Geographic News quoted Trinkaus, as saying.

Regular shoe use may have become common by 40,000 years ago, but "we still have no [additional] evidence from that time period-one way or the other," the scientist said.

In the study, the anatomical evidence allowed Trinkaus to date the origin of shoes to a period long before the oldest known shoe remains.

The study appears in the July issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Source: The Times of India

What does a 200 million year old fossil with a shoe print tell us?
http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2621.html
http://s8int.com/phile/page56.html

Any further verification on this?

No, it goes pretty much around UFO sites, but that is it.

ED:on the other side, this much is for certain: No professional took that picture!

Considering that there are indications that anatomically modern humans, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, have been around for 200,000 years, I'm not sure how a study of toe bone structure automatically equates to the use of footwear. Particularly since the article says there is no evidence from that time period, one way or the other. Any idea what the oldest verified evidence of footwear is, where it was found?

cormac

Ok, I am not going to look it up now, from memory I can say that the oldest evidence we had before this was a grave dating from the Upper Paleolithic in Spain, that contained a man in animal skin boots and a woman in fur boots. It is estimated to be in between 14 and 17.000 years old.

As far as a functional shoe, the oldest we knew of before this is a 10,000-year-old sagebrush-bark sandal, with straps running around the heel and over the top of the foot, that amazingly resembled modern Birkenstocks (my fav footwear).

Before now, I never really wondered much about ancient footwear. Thanks, that's interesting.

cormac

I'm sure 'footwear' goes back as far as man and cold climates like snow. but it wouldn't have been a 'shoe' . I doubt many old shoes could be found considering what they are made of . unless it's got rubber or plastic not much if anything is going to remain.

That's very easy to believe.

If you looked at the tennis shoes I wear, you'd believe it too!

imfao

Good one REBEL.

Cheers .

Skeptical treatments of the Meister prints here and here.

It is only one print (cracked in two, hence the symmetry which adds to the shoeprint-like appearance). If it is a human shoeprint, the trilobite fossils show that said human was walking on the seabed. It actually seems to be the most shoelike example from several more variable shapes found in the area.

I believe the idea would be that wearing footwear actually changes the bone structure in human feet.

Hi Nucular,

If it were something as rigid as your picture, worn by people over thousands of years, maybe. But early footwear and I could be wrong, was more akin to stitched rawhide boots, like full length mocassins, which are very flexible. I have a pair and they are real comfortable.

Like I was saying before, anatomically modern humans have been around for something like 200,000+ years. Part of being anatomically modern is having anatomically modern feet. Since the article says there is no evidence from that time period, one way or the other, sounds like someone took a really bad stab in the dark about toe-bone structure.

cormac

Looks kinda like an x-ray of a female wearing those pointed stilettos (few times too many)?