'Europe's oldest shoes' dug up in remote bat cave where mummified remains found

29 September 2023 , 10:57

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Sandals found in a cave in Spain are the ‘oldest in Europe’ dated at around 6,200-years-old (Image: Jam Press/Proyecto MUTERMUR)

What could be the oldest pair of shoes in the Western world have been discovered by archaeologists - and it's not the ancient pair of dusty trainers hiding under your bed.

The grass-woven braided sandals were found in a bat cave in Spain, and scientists have dated them back 6,000 years. The footwear were among a haul of items uncovered in the grotto, and it's thought the cold and arid conditions inside are what kept them preserved for so long.

The cave was originally raided by miners in the mid-1800s who discovered "partially mummified corpses" accompanied by baskets, wooden tools, and other items. It's thought the sandals, which were fashioned from esparto grass, had been worn by one of the people whose remains were discovered.

The sandals likely belonged to one of the mummified corpses discovered in the cave (Jam Press/Proyecto MUTERMUR)

Scientists said the relics were "the oldest and best preserved set of plant fibre materials in southern Europe so far known," outstripping the accolade from a previous pair discovered in Armenia from around 5,500 years ago. Currently, the oldest pair ever discovered on the planet are sandals unearthed below volcanic ash in Oregon, USA, which are an estimated 10,000 years old.

Some of the items discovered in the recent dig date back by as much as 9,000 years, archaeologists said, with the sandals in particular placed in the Neolithic period. Measuring at around 20.5cm - they'd be a UK child's size 13.5 in today's standards.

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María Herrero Otal, who authored the study into the items discovered in the cave in south west Spain, said the items tell us the primitive humans of the period were perhaps more advanced than we thought. "The technological diversity and the treatment of raw materials documented highlights the skill of prehistoric communities," she said.

Alongside the shoes, archaeologists also unearthed a woven basket and a set of wooden tools. The study writes: "This sandal set [...] represents the earliest and widest-ranging assemblage of prehistoric footwear, both in the Iberian Peninsula and in Europe, unparalleled at other latitudes."

Susie Beever