Did foot fetishism set off the development of modern man, and woman?
Pics of the toe bones in question at the cite.
Earliest Shoe-Wearers Revealed by Toe Bones
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Jan. 25, 2008 -- People started wearing shoes around 40,000 years ago,
according to a study on recently excavated small toe bones that
belonged to an individual from China who apparently loved shoes.
Most footwear erodes over time. The earliest known shoes, rope sandals
that attached to the feet with string, date to only around 10,000 B.C.
For the new study, the clues were in middle toe bones that change
during an individual's lifetime if the person wears shoes a lot.
"When you walk barefoot, your middle toes curl into the ground to give
you traction as you push off," explained co-author Erik Trinkaus, who
worked on the study with Hong Shang.
"If you regularly wear Nikes, moccasins or any other type of shoe, you
actually wind up pushing off with your big toe, with less force going
through the middle toes," added Trinkaus, a Washington University
anthropologist who is one of the world's leading experts on early
human evolution.
Small toe bones are rare in the archaeological record, so Trinkaus and
Hong jumped at the chance to study the 40,000-year-old skeleton, which
was found in Tianyuan Cave near Zhoukoudian, China.
They also analyzed a recently found 27,500-year-old Russian skeleton
with middle toe bones, as well as Neanderthal and modern Puebloan and
Inuit skeletons, also with such bones.
The findings have been accepted for publication in the Journal of
Archaeological Science.
The researchers determined that both the Chinese and Russian
individuals had more lightly built middle toe bones relative to their
body size. The Russian skeleton was also found with other individuals
who had an abundance of ivory beads around their ankles and feet,
suggesting these individuals likely wore some fairly flashy shoes.
To test the toe theory, the scientists conducted similar analysis on
the more modern samples. The habitually barefoot Native American
Puebloan possessed much more robust middle toe bones.
The shoe-wearing Inuit, who had a very active lifestyle, possessed
semi-sturdy middle toe bones, while the Neanderthal, with ultra hefty
middle toe bones, showed no signs of having worn shoes.
Trinkaus explained to Discovery News that the date of the first
footwear corresponds with an important time in human history.
"A cultural evolution was starting," he said of the Paleolithic
period. "We start to see all kinds of changes, such as more elaborate
toolkits and the beginnings of art. The findings about footwear are
another piece in the puzzle."
Trenton Holliday, an associate professor of anthropology at Tulane
University, told Discovery News that the toe bone comparison between
ancient and more modern groups "gives credence to Trinkaus' position
that one can determine whether prehistoric groups were shod, at least
with rigid-soled shoes, by examining the robusticity of the [bones] of
their lesser toes."
Holliday, however, doubts that Neanderthals were completely shoe-free.
"Considering that they lived in Europe primarily during glacial
periods, I find it highly improbable that they did not wear some type
of footwear, so what I think is most likely is that they wore some
type of soft wraps on their feet that did not alter their locomoter
biomechanics of their feet the way a stiff-soled shoe would," Holliday
said.
Trinkaus agrees with Holliday's Neanderthal theory, although he
suggested Neanderthals might have frequently gone barefoot too.
"Some individuals even today still don't wear shoes and live in very
cold environments, such as in the hills of Eastern Bulgaria and
Romania," he said.
Earliest Shoe
No comments:
Post a Comment