• Analytical chemistry dates leather shoe as oldest ever
    Analytical chemistry techniques prove shoe to be 5,500 years old

Electrophoretic Separations

Analytical chemistry dates leather shoe as oldest ever

Jun 10 2010

A leather shoe has been dated as the oldest in the world using analytical chemistry techniques and accelerator mass spectrometry, defying the scientists who found it and their predictions that it would be between six and seven centuries old.

In fact, the footwear found in an Armenian cave is 5,500 years old - a statistic verified through analytical chemistry in three different ways.

Two of those ways applied mass spectrometry to date the leather of the shoe, which was pre-treated with an acid-base-acid sequence, rinsed then bleached before radiocarbon measurements were carried out.

For the third dating, grass found inside the shoe was subjected to a similar process, providing independent support for the contemporaneity of the sample.

Dr Ron Pinhasi, lead author of the research from University College Cork in Ireland, says: "We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600-700 years old because they were in such good condition."

It is thought that a layer of sheep dung in the cave where they were found helped to preserve the shoe and the other items discovered nearby.

Digital Edition

Chromatography Today - Buyers' Guide 2022

October 2023

In This Edition Modern & Practical Applications - Accelerating ADC Development with Mass Spectrometry - Implementing High-Resolution Ion Mobility into Peptide Mapping Workflows Chromatogr...

View all digital editions

Events

analytica 2024

Apr 09 2024 Munich, Germany

Korea Lab 2024

Apr 23 2024 Kintex, South Korea

Korea Chem 2024

Apr 23 2024 Seoul, South Korea

AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo

Apr 28 2024 Montreal, Quebec, Canada

SETAC Europe

May 05 2024 Seville, Spain

View all events