Shoe Fly

We used to get a new pair of Weejuns and a pair of wingtips and some Jack Purcells every fall for the new school year. If you were feeling flush, you broke bad and added some desert boots to your shoe wardrobe.

A nice pair of Clarks® Desert Boots would last through the years, and with rubber soles, they gave you the added advantage of being able to sneak in the house really late after the watershed patrol chased everyone out of Loch Raven.

It's desert boots that I thought of when I saw this article about the oldest shoe ever located. It seems to be suede, and was found in Armenia, and radiocarbon dating testing shows the shoe to be 5,500 years old - older than Betty White and Dick Van Dyke combined!

"Could I see it in a black, size 7?"

At first the shoe, found among a cache of other really cool old junk in a cave in Armenia in 2008, was thought to be maybe four or five centuries old, but when the people who dug it up couldn't find a sales receipt or UPC code on the inside, they investigated further.  And in that same archeological dig, they dug up the oldest preserved human brain, seeds from nearly 40 types of fruits, cloth, metal knives, dried grapes, and the oldest winery in the world.

This old winery caused quite a Ripple of interest, if you dig it.

The shoe is roughly the size of a current woman's size 5, maybe a 6 if you stretch it first, but no one, male or female, would probably wish to slip it on because, well, because the very substance that preserved the leather this long was...several layers of sheep dung. 

You can strap on your Nikes and go see the shoe at the History Museum of Armenia. Don't be sheepish about it!