‘OLDEST LEATHER MOCCASINS’ DISCOVERED

RESEARCHERS FOUND WORLD’S
OLDEST LEATHER SHOE IN ARMENIA

(CNN) - A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the UK, has been found in a cave in Armenia. The 5,500-year-old one-piece shoe antedates Stonehenge by a millennium and precedes every loafer, mukluk, wader, clog, bootee, stiletto, wingtip, mule, Oxford and cross trainer anyone has ever seen, according to Ron Pinhasi, a lecturer in prehistoric archaeology at University College Cork in Ireland. The effort that resulted in the find dates to 2005, when Pinhasi and his team of archaeologists first entered the cave about an hour south of the capital city of Yerevan, in Vayotz Dzor province on the border with Iran and Turkey, and decided it looked promising. Two years later, Pinhasi returned, dug down about half a meter and discovered well-preserved organic material such as textiles, ropes and wooden stakes.

The next year, they found a pit covered with sheep or goat dung, and below it they discovered broken pottery and goat horns covering the shoe. The researchers published their findings in the scientific journal PLoS ONE. The right-footed, undecorated shoe - today it would be a size 5 - probably belonged to a woman, “but we cannot be certain; it could be a man with small feet,” Pinhasi said. A leather thong is stitched through four sets of eyelets in the back and 15 sets in the top. The shoe was lightly worn. Some of the eyelets have been recut, but the sole shows little wear. Two leather samples were taken: One was sent for carbon dating to the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the Univ. of Oxford and the other to the Univ. of California-Irvine Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility; a piece of the straw was sent to Oxford. Age estimates were the same for all three. Pinhasi said he had no idea how common it would have been at that time for people to wear shoes.


The Vedas were always considered the repositories of advanced knowledge and high thinking; and trough all the Vedic chronology, we learn about the development of mighty civilizations which existed so many billions of years in the past. So it is not surprising to read that scientists have found a moccasin shoe dated in more than 5,000 years ago.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Śrīla Prabhupada: Our Vedic information is that the first created being is the most intelligent, the most intellectual person within the universe - Lord Brahmā, the cosmic engineer. So how can we accept your (scientific) theory that intellect develops by evolution? We have received our Vedic knowledge from Brahma, who is so perfect.
Devotee: But wouldn't there be evidence in the earth, some remains?
Śrīla Prabhupada: Our evidence is intelligence, not stones and bones. Our evidence is intelligence. We get Vedic information by disciplic succession from the most intelligent. It is coming down by śruti, hearing. Vyāsadeva heard from Nārada, Nārada heard from Brahmā - millions and millions of years ago. Millions and millions of our years pass, and it is not even one day for Brahmā. So millions and billions and trillions of years are not very astonishing to us, for that is not even one day of Brahmā. ... So we get such intelligent information in the Vedas.

Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
“The Journey of Self-Discovery”
“Perspectives on Science and Philosophy”
“Evolution in Fact and Fantasy” (June 1972)