Core77

Incredibly Modern-Looking 2,000-Year-Old Shoe

Air Rome

By Rain Noe - November 10, 2021

in Sneakers

What is believed to be the oldest leather shoe in the world is the Areni-1, some 5,500 years old, recovered by an archaeologist at an Armenian cave. It's technically impressive for being made over five millennia ago, and it looks like what you'd expect:

Image: Pinhasi R, Gasparian B, Areshian G, Zardaryan D, Smith A, et al. (authors of source article) - Part of figure 1 from: 2010 First Direct Evidence of Chalcolithic Footwear from the Near Eastern Highlands. PLoS ONE 5(6): e10984. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010984, CC BY 2.5

However, this shoe below, recovered from a well at the Saalburg Roman Fort in modern-day Germany, is about 2,000 years old—and looks shockingly modern:

Image: Saalburg Museum, Photographer P. Knieriem

Source unknown

That's 3,500 years of advancement in craft for you.

For those interested, the Saalburg Museum has (unembeddable) video here showing how this shoe was made.

Lastly, historical reproduction artisan Martin Moser produces and sells duplicate pairs of the shoe here.

Image: Martin Moser

o
3

Favorite This
Q
3

Comment

Comments

Steve Sutton

3 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Well, they say fashion trends repeat every 20 - 30 years. This seems to enforce that theory. :)

!Report as spam
Christian Lockenwitz

3 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

"Historical reproduction artisan" - that sounds like an exciting niche line of work!

!Report as spam
Donald Jones

3 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Oxfordlithic.

!Report as spam