Cave men wore boots too!

Footwear is a fashionable item that has been oogled over by Women around the world for years, However it seems that toe bones from a cave in China suggest that people have been wearing shoes for atleast 40,000 years !!!

Erik Trinkaus  from Washington University in St Louis, measured the shape and density of toe bones from the 40,000 year old skeleton that was found in Tianyuan cave near Beijing. They compared these bones with those from 20th century Americans, and bones from various periods in between.                                                                                 
Shoes alter the way a person walks. With a rigid sole the toes curl far less than when barefoot and less force is passed through the bones, leading to obvious differences in the three recent populations. "Modern shoe-wearing Americans have wimpy little toes," says Trinkaus. Barefoot native Americans have strong, large toes. Shoe-wearing predecessors lie somewhere in between.

Trinkaus and Shang found that the Tianyuan toe bones were most si
milar to the more recent bones, showing that this person from the past regularly wore shoes!