Northern Germany's oldest shoe discovered

Archaeologists from the Lower Saxony State Heritage Office (NLD) in cooperation with the mining company Vechta found a well-preserved leather shoe. Together with various parts of the wagon, it had been hanging in the peat bog right next to an old plank path for more than 2,000 years.
Archaeological excavations at the sites of historic paths across the peat bog have repeatedly yielded interesting finds. The most recent addition is a two thousand year old leather boot in excellent condition. It was discovered along the so-called Bohlenweg Pr 6, which crossed the large bog between Diepholz and Lohn in the late Iron Age.

The oldest known surviving shoe in northern Germany is a specific type of sandal that fastens at the front and is held together by a leather strap. Similar leather shoes were found earlier, especially on peat bogs, but they are much younger. Yet each of these boots is a unique piece of craftsmanship that was made to fit its wearer.
"The moors of Lower Saxony are silent witnesses to many thousands of years of history, a unique archive where not only ceramic shards and metal objects, but also organic finds," said Lower Saxony's Minister of Science and Culture, Björn Thümler. "The most famous are the human remains, but also idols, long wooden roads and many artefacts of life at the time. A lost shoe, recovered after two thousand years, is a personal testimony to earlier times. You can hardly get to the people of that time in a more poetic way. It's one of those testimonies that makes time tangible, as if you were watching it under a magnifying glass."

Remains of a broken axle and other parts of a wooden cart, apparently pulled by cattle, were found near the shoe. The axle had broken in two, and the wagon had probably fallen off the road. Perhaps the owner dropped the shoe while trying to pull it out, or it may have remained trapped in the sticky mud, preserving it for the next 2,000 years under near-ideal conditions.
Ancient plank roads are a unique testimony to the mobility of our ancestors. They show us the value that people placed on the need for safe communication routes thousands of years ago. The unique conditions of peat bogs meant that organic materials were preserved. This preserved not only the wooden paths themselves, but also other unique finds made of wood, wool or leather, which under normal conditions have no chance of surviving.

Lower Saxony is particularly rich in peat bog finds. The local population could only provide communication for the brisk trade and traffic between the different regions with the help of these specific crossings. In order to cross the once extensive peatland, people have been building roads and paths made of wood for more than 6,000 years. Over 500 such paths are known from Lower Saxony.
The four-kilometre-long Pr 6 is one of the longest bog paths in the world. More than 2,000 years ago it crossed the marsh between Diepholz and Lohne. Around 46 BC. the construction of this boardwalk was a truly great construction site: A huge amount of timber was needed and a large number of workers were needed to clear large areas of the nearbyclose to the site, prepared the timber, and finally, with difficulty, got it to the peat bog so that they could build the straight lines of the road.

Since June 2019, sections of the path have been repeatedly archaeologically surveyed as part of a collaboration between NLD and denkmal3D, who are digitising all the finds. In the near future, the 520-metre stretch must give way to ongoing peat extraction. In the course of the salvage survey, all finds are photogrammetrically documented using laser scanners. It will thus be possible to preserve the road electronically forever thanks to high-quality 3D virtualisations.

Roman Němec

2000-year-old timbers from a wooden path in the peat bogs

An obscured path from 50 BC.

A leather boot from the peat bogs along the wooden path is more than 2000 years old

Moore Moor

Sources: ndr.de, denkmalpflege.niedersachsen.de, thehistoryblog.com