Abstract
Humans appear to have regularly worn footwear since at least the Early Upper Palaeolithic. However, due to the perishable nature of footwear, the archaeological record of its presence during the Pleistocene is poor. While footwear would have played an essential role in protecting the foot, it could also have been used as ornamentation and/or as a social marker. Footprints may provide the most relevant insight regarding the origin and function of footwear. Here we report the discovery of footprints in Cussac Cave (southwest France) at 28–31 ka cal BP and the results of a multi-focal approach, including experimentation, that demonstrate that Gravettian people most likely wore footwear while moving through the cave. These singular footprints would constitute one of the oldest cases of indirect evidence for this unusual practice in decorated Palaeolithic caves and reinforce the exceptional nature of Cussac already attested by the presence of monumental engravings and funerary deposits.
Highlights
Humans appear to have regularly worn footwear since at least the Early Upper Palaeolithic
The oldest direct evidence of a leather moccasin-type shoe was found in the cave of Areni-1 (Armenia) and dates only to the Chalcolithic (3627–3377 cal BC)[8]. This question is rarely discussed in ichnology, probably because the great majority of recent studies are focused on barefoot tracks at Pleistocene African and European open-air sites[9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20]
Our study of the footprints in Cussac Cave revisits the debate on the origin of footwear and raises new questions about the function of both footwear and that of Palaeolithic caves
Summary
Humans appear to have regularly worn footwear since at least the Early Upper Palaeolithic. We test the hypothesis of the use of footwear by the Gravettian people at Cussac by experimentally quantifying the morphology of the footprints made by soft footwear on a clay substrate similar to that of Cussac.
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