Prehistoric footwear
I came across a nifty story today, where Dr. Erik Trinkaus has made the case for prehistoric shoes by analyzing the bone structures of early humans. By looking at the bones of the smaller toes, and discovering that they were not as strong as their earlier ancestors, he inferred the use of shoes: the lower leg bones of the remained just as strong as normal, only the toes were weaker. This implies the existence of prehistoric supportive footwear:
“I discovered that the bones of the little toes of humans from that time frame were much less strongly built than those of their ancestors while their leg bones remained large and strong,” Trinkaus said. “The most logical cause would be the introduction of supportive footwear.”
During barefoot walking, the smaller toes flex for traction, keeping the toe bones strong. Supportive footwear lessens the roll of the little toes, thus weakening them.
Finding the actual shoes themselves is a bit more of a challenge because the materials used obviously don’t hold up well to the test of time. Anyone who has seen the pile of shoes at the Holocaust Museum can tell you that. But by analyzing the fossil record, Dr. Trinkaus has found that about 26,000 years ago, the bone structure began to change, leaving the smaller toes weaker.
For some reason, I find the thought that it took humanity many thousands of years to figure out that it might be a good idea to wrap their feet up a very depressing thought. But then, I can barely walk outside on my lawn barefoot, and absolutely love those socks that have bottoms that are twice as thick as their tops.
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos
I, on the other hand, can barely stand to wear shoes in the summer…definitely not anything more substantial than flip-flops these days. Anyone studying my prehistoric remains will probably wonder if I EVER wore shoes. :)
Comment by wynk — August 21, 2005 @ 1:52 am