Anatomical evidence for the antiquity of human footwear: Tianyuan and Sunghir

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Abstract

Trinkaus [Trinkaus, E., 2005. Anatomical evidence for the antiquity of human footwear use. J. Archaeol. Sci. 32, 1515–1526] provided a comparative biomechanical analysis of the proximal pedal phalanges of western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic and Middle Upper Paleolithic humans, in the context of those of variably shod recent humans. The anatomical evidence indicated that supportive footwear was rare in the Middle Paleolithic but became frequent by the Middle Upper Paleolithic. Based on that analysis, additional data are provided for the Middle Upper Paleolithic (∼27,500 cal BP) Sunghir 1 and the earlier (∼40,000 cal BP) Tianyuan 1 modern humans. Both specimens exhibit relatively gracile middle proximal phalanges in the context of otherwise robust lower limbs. The former specimen reinforces the association of footwear with pedal phalangeal gracility in the Middle Upper Paleolithic. Tianyuan 1 indicates a greater antiquity for the habitual use of footwear than previously inferred, predating the emergence of the Middle Upper Paleolithic.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

The comparison of pedal phalangeal robusticity is based on external morphometrics of the available Late Pleistocene late archaic and early modern human phalanges and associated postcrania, divided into three samples: Middle Paleolithic late archaic humans (Neandertals: La Chapelle-aux-Saints, La Ferrassie, Kiik-Koba, Palomas, Regourdou, Shanidar, and Spy; N = 9/7); Middle Paleolithic early modern humans (Qafzeh and Skhul; N = 4/3), and Middle Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian sensu lato: Barma Grande,

Results

As previously noted (Trinkaus, 2005), the three recent human samples follow the predicted pattern. Whether the polar moments of area of the middle phalanges are compared to phalangeal length alone or to phalanx length times body mass (Fig. 2, Fig. 3), the habitually shod Euroamerican sample has the most gracile phalanges, the habitually barefoot Amerindian sample has the most robust phalanges, and the habitually shod but robust Inuit sample has an intermediate distribution. They are highly

Discussion and conclusion

Tianyuan 1 therefore extends back in time during the Late Pleistocene the habitual use of footwear, albeit only for this one individual from mid-latitude eastern Eurasia. Early modern human remains from this time period, Nazlet Khater (Crevecoeur, 2006), Oase (Trinkaus et al., 2003, Rougier et al., 2007), Hofmeyr (Grine et al., 2007), and Niah (Barker et al., 2007), lack pedal phalanges, as do late Neandertals and more recent Early Upper Paleolithic modern humans in western Eurasia. It is

Acknowledgments

The Tianyuan Project is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 40372015), the President Fund of Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant KL203302), and a Wenner-Gren Foundation fellowship (to H.S.). Collection of the Sunghir data was made possible by T. Balueva. Comparative pedal phalangeal data collection has been supported by NSF, Leakey Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation and Washington University.

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