Ancient shoes: tracks on a South African beach offer oldest evidence yet of human footwear

Charles Helm

When and where did our ancestors first fashion footwear? We cannot look to physical evidence of shoes for the answer, as the perishable materials from which they were made would no longer be evident. 

Ichnology, the study of fossil tracks and traces, can help to answer this unresolved question through a search for clear evidence of footprints made by humans who were shod – that is, wearing some kind of foot covering.

But this is no simple endeavour, as our research team from the Cape south coast ichnology project in South Africa recently reported. Over the past 15 years we have identified more than 350 vertebrate tracksites along the Cape coast. 

These include a number of tracks made by humans who were clearly walking or jogging barefoot, as evidenced by toe impressions. But we also noticed similar trackways, seemingly well preserved, that contained no toe impressions. Realising, too,