Seems Professor Erik Trinkaus and I are the only two who accept interbreeding between ancient and modern humans. Ancient human genes may have died out since of course.
Amaranth. Why am I not surprised you are interested in footwear? I'd say sewn skin tunics developed about the time humans were able to move north of 50 degrees, perhaps 30,000 years ago.
I also accept that there was interbreeding, Terrynewzealand.
When Homo Sapiens 'came out of Africa' presumably they left behind the 1.5+ million year old Homo erectus, and the later Neanderthals.
Interbreeding has been proven to have occured between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, especially in Europe.
Now it remains to be seen if the same can have happened between ourselves and other (different) ancient peoples that populated East Asia, at the "out of Africa time"
Neanderthals were very artistic, and often cooked their food, - cave remains support this.
Clothes and footware would have been in use in Europe 100,000years ago.
As for Shoes or Sandals, Louis Leaky stated on the basis of very ancient artifacts found within rock matrix at Olduvai Gorge, namely drilled sharks teeth and cutting flint tools.
In fact Leaky considered that human development as being 40 million years in the past, rather than the accepted 4 or 5 million years accepted today.
'Lucy' born about 3.5-4.0 million years ago, and walked upright seems to confirm his thoughts.
A number of artifacts found in Utah and in Pennsylvanian coal mines, although photographed, and I believe a shoe or sandal showing stitching was one of those. They were invariably called fraudelent by the very religious fraternitys of those times.
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"You will never find a real Human being - even in a mirror." .....Mike Kremer.
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