World's oldest leather shoe

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Above is what archaeologists suggest is the world's oldest leather shoe ever found. Researchers found the 5,500-year-old footwear in an Armenian cave. Until the find, the oldest leather shoe was one worn by Ötzi, the murdered Iceman I posted about yesterday. From the New York Times:

Perfectly preserved under layers of sheep dung (who needs cedar closets?), the shoe, made of cowhide and tanned with oil from a plant or vegetable, is about 5,500 years old, older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, scientists say. Leather laces crisscross through numerous leather eyelets, and it was worn on the right foot; there is no word on the left shoe.

While the shoe more closely resembles an L. L.Bean-type soft-soled walking shoe than anything by Jimmy Choo, "these were probably quite expensive shoes, made of leather, very high quality," said one of the lead scientists, Gregory Areshian, of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

It could have fit a small man or a teenager, but was most likely worn by a woman with roughly size 7 feet.

"This Shoe Had Prada Beat by 5,500 Years"