11.19-11.20

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/10/science/la-sci-oldest-shoe-20100610

11.19
Archaeologists from UCLA and Ireland have discovered the world's oldest leather shoe, an exquisitely preserved 5,600-
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(X) It was stuffed with grass, which may have been used to keep the wearer's foot warm or to preserve the shoe's shape for storage, the researchers reported Wednesday in the online journal PLoS One.

(X) Such materials usually degrade over time;

the team attributed the unusual preservation to the cave's perennially cool temperature and low humidity and a concrete-like layer of sheep dung that sealed in everything and prevented fungi from destroying the remains.


(X) "The potential to rewrite the early history of northern Mesopotamia is quite vast," he said.

"The shoe itself is really interesting and cool," added archaeologist Mitchell S. Rothman of Widener University in Chester, Pa., who also was not involved in the research. "But it is just a marker of how incredibly good the preservation is at the site, which is incredibly important."

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the cave ... are rather rare," allowing preservation of artifacts from a time period for which such materials are scarce, said UCLA archaeologist Charles Stanish, who was not involved in the research. The cave, he added, is one of at least 39 that researchers are just beginning to explore.

"The fourth millennium is when the modern world appears -- the first cities, the first kings, the first axes, the first bureaucrats, and the first international trading system," Rothman said.
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(X) The research paper focuses primarily on the shoe, however

Prior to the discovery, the oldest known footwear from Eurasia was found on Otzi, the "iceman" discovered on a glacier in the Otztal Alps on the border between Austria and Italy. Those shoes are about 5,300 years old, but were in relatively poor shape. They were moccasin-type footwear in which the sole is attached to an upper "sock" with leather thongs.
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Radiocarbon dating indicated that the newly found shoe was from about 3,600 BC. Its relatively sophisticated design, however, suggests that the style had already been in use for a long time, said UCLA archaeologist Gregory Areshian, co-leader of the research team.

(X) Previously, he added, researchers had tried to reconstruct what shoes had looked like from impressions on pottery and other fragmentary artifacts. "Here we have it in an absolutely tangible way."

The shoe is shaped to fit the wearer's right foot. It is 9.65 inches long, which corresponds to a U.S. women's size 7.

(X) Though small, it could easily have fitted a man from that era, said archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of University College Cork in Ireland, Areshian's co-leader.

Researchers have so far excavated only about 2% of the cave
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The team believes the cave was abandoned after an earthquake, which caused the ceiling to collapse.