Earliest evidence of flip flops in the Middle Stone Age | Wits University

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Flip flops. Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Oct. 27, 2023 (Phys.org) -- In a twist in the ancient human story, emerging evidence suggests that we may have worn shoes as early as the Middle Stone Age (75,000—150,000 years ago). This could mean that our species had complex cognitive and practical abilities much earlier than was previously thought.

Europe's oldest known shoes are 6,000 years old. In South Africa, it was believed that before 2,000 years ago, people weren't wearing shoes.

But trace fossils from three paleosurfaces (surfaces of considerable antiquity) found on South Africa's Cape Coast change that narrative. According to one of the researchers, Dr. Bernhard Zipfel, of Wits' Evolutionary Studies Institute, the new evidence reveals that humans of the time wore some form of footwear to walk across the beach.

"We all assumed that people were habitually barefoot. However, the Southern Cape Coast had very sharp rocks at the time. It makes sense that people would use footwear to protect themselves. One hundred thousand years ago, an injury to the foot could have been fatal," said Zipfel.

There is no hard evidence of what shoes ancient hominins wore. Leather and plant materials would have been biodegraded. Zipfel and his fellow researchers thus considered "shod" tracks.

The global record of sites attributed to shod trackmakers is sparse, however. Only four sites older than 30,000 years have been postulated, all from Western Europe. This included a Neanderthal site. Therefore, ichnology—the study of fossil tracks and traces—research can unlock new insights into the history of civilization.

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