Ancient Shoes

From Catlow Cave, Oregon, 9,300 years old. Made of sagebrush bark.

From the Arnold Research Cave, Missouri, 8,000 years old.

Another shoe from the Arnold Cave. The shoes from this cave were quite diverse, suggesting that a variety of styles were in use over the thousand years when the cave was being visited by Indians.

From Armenia, the oldest known sewn leather shoe, 5,500 years old.

The shoes of Ötzi the "ice man", about 5000 years old. These consisted of an inner net of grass twine, surrounded by grass insulation, surrounded by deerskin, all attached to a bearskin sole.

Replica of Ötzi's shoes.

Shoe made of linden tree bark from a Neolithic lake village under Zurich, Switzerland, 5000 years old.

Egyptian sandal from Sedment, ca. 3,400 years old.

Tutankhamun's sandals.

Early Iron Age shoe from a salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria, 2,700 years old.

The golden shoes of the Hochdorf Prince, a celtic chieftain of ca. 2500 years ago.

Shoe from one of the frozen tombs in the Altai, ca. 2400 years ago.

Roman shoes from York, England, ca. 1800 years old.