Most parents know that feeling of coming home, opening the door and finding that your child has somehow lost a shoe.
Scientists now think it may be a sentiment felt by tens of billions of parents for millennia.
A 3,000-year-old Bronze Age baby shoe has been found in a river bed in north Kent, dating from between 888 and 781 BC.
An encouraging fact is that at least 62 billion people have come and gone since then, and many have probably experienced the same shoe problem that parents often worry about today.
The rare 6-inch Bronze Age leather shoe is believed to be the oldest found in Britain and was found by archaeologist Steve Tomlinson, 51, while sculpting mud in September.
A Bronze Age leather shoe (pictured), believed to be the oldest in Britain, has been unearthed from a river bed in north Kent
Archaeologist Steve Tomlinson (51) (pictured) discovered the 3,000-year-old shoe that belonged to a toddler
A micro-CAT scan (photo) of the shoe revealed that the sole consisted of several layers
Mr Tomlinson, of Ramsgate, Kent, was initially unenthusiastic about the find, but sent it to a unit in East Kilbride, Scotland, for radiocarbon dating.
Five weeks later, he got the “shocking” result that the display dates from the Late Bronze Age.
Mr Tomlinson said: “I thought it was a good thing but I still thought it was medieval.
“I sent it in for radiocarbon dating and five weeks later I got a call from a gentleman in the lab who said, ‘I think you better sit down for this.’
“I had a good day with mud pools that day – I found quite a few Roman potsherds – but I didn’t expect it.
“I could have missed it very easily, but I had a hunch that it was something special.
“It’s absolutely mesmerizing.”
The shoe is 15 cm long, which means that by today’s standards the child would have been a size seven
The child is said to be around two or three years old and scientists will conduct DNA tests to determine if the owner of the program was a boy or a girl
An X-ray taken at Canterbury Christchurch University revealed that the bottom of the sole was printed with a textile pattern
By today’s standards, the shoe would be a size seven, and archaeologists believe the owner was about two or three years old.
Mr Tomlinson said he was “convinced” it was the oldest of its kind in the UK and possibly the smallest in the world.
He said, “It’s actually a very small thing.”
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“We hope that eventually professionals will be able to reconstruct it and it will eventually end up in the British Museum.
“This is of incredible national importance.”
The shoe is now in the hands of the cultural scientist and archaeological curator Dana Goodburn-Brown (63), who specializes in micro-excavations.
Ms Goodburn-Brown said: “Organic materials such as leather, textiles or wood will not survive unless they are in a very dry place or in the mud without oxygen.
“This shoe was in a muddy environment with sediment without oxygen.
“We call these anaerobic conditions.
“It reaches this equilibrium state where it does not biodegrade. This is why it is so rare.
“It’s unbelievable that it took so long.
“The fact that it came from somewhere else and Steve found it before it started to deteriorate is incredible.
“We don’t know where it came from, but it is very likely that it was washed away by cliff erosion, which is quite common in Kent, or formed during dredging.
Dana, from Sittingbourne, Kent, took the shoe to experts at the University of Kent who examined it under a micro-CT scanner, where they found the sole was multi-layered.
More importantly, an X-ray taken at Canterbury Christchurch University revealed that the bottom of the sole was printed with a textile pattern, suggesting that it had been wrapped in a piece of fabric for some time or pressed against a piece of material.
The next step is to send the leather off for DNA testing to see what they can learn about the shoe’s original owner.
Scientists may even be able to tell whether the toddler was a boy or a girl and what animal the leather came from.
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James is an author and travel journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a love for exploring new cultures and discovering unique destinations, James brings his readers on a journey with him through his articles.
