Humans could have worn shoes 148 thousand years ago
A new analysis of ancient footprints in South Africa shows that the people who left them may have been wearing hard-soled sandals.
While researchers do not give any bold conclusions about the use of shoes in the distant past, the unusual characteristics of the prints may be the earliest evidence of people using shoes to protect their feet from sharp stones in the Middle Stone Age, IFLScience reports.
The researchers suggest that the footprints found at the site called Kleinkranz can be dated between 79,000 and 148,000 years old.
"Although we do not find the evidence conclusive, we interpret the three sites [...] as indicative of hominids using hard-soled sandals," the researchers write.
They further explain that coastal foraging for food involved climbing over sharp rocks, posing a risk of stepping on sea urchins. Thus, people could have used shoes.
