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German Researchers Discover Stone Age Footwear

The well-preserved footwear dating back to the Stone Age, is of great historical significance, the head of Stuttgart's City Council Johannes Schmalzl said on Tuesday, March 10.

He described the find as a "small sensation," comparing it to fragments of clothing once worn by Oetzi, an Alpine ice man whose 5,000-year-old mummified body was discovered in a melting glacier in the nearby Alps in 1991.

The European size 36 sandal, made of woven wood, was discovered in silt deposits on the site of an early settlement of lake dwellings built on stilts at the water's edge.

Schmalzl said European Union funds would be used to research and preserve the areas where lake dwellings existed, on Lake Constance and Lake Zurich in neighboring Switzerland.

The settlements were inhabited between the 4th and 1st Century BC.

Read entire article at Deutsche Welle