Archaeologists (1) ... that a perfectly preserved 5,500-year-old shoe has been discovered in a cave in Armenia in south-west Asia. It is (2) ... to be the oldest leather shoe ever found. The shoe was made of a single piece of leather, stitched at the front and back, and was shaped to fit the wearer’s foot. It had been stuffed with grasses, either for warmth or to make sure it kept its shape. The shoe is relatively small but we can’t say for (3) ... whether it was worn by a man or a woman,’ says Dr Ron Pinhasi, an archaeologist on the research team. ‘We thought at first that it was about 600−700 years old because it was in such good shape.’ Shoes of this type from later periods have turned up in archaeological excavations in various places in Europe, and shoes of a very similar design were still being used on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland as (4) ... as the 1950s. It’s obviously a style which (5) ... popular for thousands of years.