The pair of sandals date to the Neolithic period.
Scientists have discovered what they believe are Europe's oldest pair of shoes in a bat cave in Spain. According to a study published in the journal Science Advances, the pair of sandals woven from grass are thought to be around 6,000 years old. They were among a haul of ancient objects found in the Cave of the Bats, in Andalusia, which was excavated by miners in the 19th Century. Researchers at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Alcala University in Spain have now analysed the objects which also include baskets and sets of tools.
The objects "are the oldest and best-preserved set of plant fibre materials in southern Europe so far known," the study's co-author Maria Herrero Otal said in the study. "The technological diversity and the treatment of raw materials documented highlights the skill of prehistoric communities," she added.
According to the study, the ancient footwear was first discovered in 1857, when a cave in Spain was looted by miners. However, when the artefacts were first dated in the 1970s they were identified as being about 1,000 years more recent than this latest analysis found.
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Now, a rapid advance in dating techniques put the items more than 2,000 years older than previously thought. The researchers said that low humidity and cool winds in the cave kept the artefacts unusually well-preserved. Some artefacts in the set date back 9,000 years, they revealed.
The sandals that were analysed by the researchers in Spain were made of grasses as well as other materials, including leather, lime and ramie bast, a type of natural fibre. They date to the Neolithic period, which makes them older than the 5,500-year-old leather shoes discovered in a cave in Armenia in 2008.
The researchers also studied several baskets and other wooden artefacts in the collection. These objects "open up groundbreaking perspectives on the complexity of Early-Middle Holocene populations in Europe," they said. Both the baskets and sandals suggest that the makers had an extended knowledge of the plant resources in the local environment as well as a high level of expertise, the researchers noted.