Sandals buried in a bat cave in southern Spain may be the oldest footwear ever discovered in Europe, scientists said this week, estimating that they could be up to 6,200 years old.
Baskets, tools and the sandals found in the 19th century at a hunter-gatherer burial site in the Cueva de los Murciélagos, or “cave of the bats,” near the southern city of Granada, are much older than previously thought, a team examining the items said in an article in Science Advances journal on Wednesday.
The study used radiocarbon dating to date 76 items, including baskets and 22 sandals made from esparto, a kind of grass used in crafts across the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa for thousands of years.
The ancient humans crushed the grass to make twine to braid baskets, bags and sandals. The grass had to be dried for 20 to 30 days before it was rehydrated for 24 hours to make it pliable — a complex and skilled process.
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Similar sandals found in Armenia are estimated to be 5,500 years old, while the shoes worn by “Ötzi the Iceman” — a prehistoric man found in Italy in 1991 — are dated to 5,300 years ago.
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