8,300-Year-Old Shoes Found In Cave Might Be Stylish Today

MADE OF PLANT FIBER and leather, the shoes were excavated from beneath the floor of a cave in Missouri several years ago, but scientists only recently determined their age.

Ancient American Indians made more than just moccasins to protect their feet from jagged rocks and sharp thorns, researchers said yesterday. They also made sling-back sandals and slip-ons that might even seem fashionable today.

And though the shoes, uncovered in a central Missouri cave, were made about 8,300 years ago, many are remarkably well-preserved, the scientists said. Made from plant fiber and leather, the shoes were excavated from layers of dirt on the cave floor.

Artifacts such as spear points, scrapers and a few arrowheads indicate Indians were in the cave up to 11,000 years ago, said Jenna Kuttruff, Gail DeHart and Michael O'Brien, in the journal Science.

The shoes were dug out of the Arnold Research cave over several years beginning in 1955, but scientists only recently determined their age. They did this by testing a few fibers at a time using an ultra-precise technique called accelerator mass spectrometry. The technique used an atomic accelerator to strip carbon atoms off the fibers, one atom at a time.

Since the amount of carbon-14 gradually decays over time at a measurable rate, scientists can tell how old a sample is by determining how much carbon-14 is present compared to other carbon isotopes.

The shoes' ages were uncertain because the cave deposits were jumbled, and using standard carbon-dating techniques would have consumed too much of the material. O'Brien, a University of Missouri archaeologist, said the scientists "didn't expect them (the shoes) to be that early."

The tests showed that the "newest" shoes, dating to about 1,000 years ago, were deerskin moccasins, O'Brien said. The oldest are made of woven fibers from a plant called rattlesnake master, a member of the yucca family.

O'Brien said the shoes were impressive both for their wide variety and the fact that they were "extremely well-preserved." Although "no one would do it," he said, "you could put some of the better-preserved ones on and still get a little mileage out of them."

Some sandals "look like modern (Mexican) huaraches" and others have a sling back, "just like a modern woman's sling-back shoe." The earliest shoe dated by the scientists was a sandal in which the thongs wrapped up around the ankle.

Close examination of the shoes also showed "quite extensive evidence of repair, where they would weave new fibers in to repair where the heel or the ball of the foot wore through," O'Brien said.

There were no obvious signs of design evolution or improvement, however. "We can't say they improved," he explained. "They are different, but it's not like they started out really crude and got any better. They were very sophisticated shoes, from early to late."

O'Brien's colleagues, Kuttruff and DeHart, work at Louisiana State University.