Giant Roman Shoes

 

Not that there's a direct connection to yesterday's article, but on the subject of big feet... archaeologists have stumbled across some curious discoveries in Northumberland. For a long time now they have been digging up ancient leather shoes from the garrison towns along Hadrian's Wall, but they have recently extracted some highly unusual ones from a pit at the Magna fort near the modern town of Haltwhistle. They are unusual due to their enormous size. Some are over thirty-two centimetres long, making them the equivalent of a UK size fourteen. This makes it likely the rest of the wearers' bodies were also unusually large. While there's a general correlation between body and shoe size, it's not always totally proportional. Generally, taller individuals tend to have larger feet, but there's a wide range of shoe sizes for any given height. Factors like genetics, ethnicity and even nutrition can influence foot size. Sex is a factor too; women generally have much smaller feet than men. I myself have unusually large feet; I take a size twelve shoe, and I am six-foot-two, slightly above average height. Some of the shoes are also an odd shape, having a normal heel space but being far wider around the toes. Because of their age, seventeen hundred years or so, most are only soles, although there are a few specimens with uppers. There are too many of them, at least five pairs, for them all to belong to the same individual. The Romans often wore sandals, especially in warm and wet climates, which Northumberland had in those days, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/11/climate-change-portal.html. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1TN-cc8kco. There are no records or identity labels that connect any of these shoes to any historical owners. Some people have suggested that the shoes also had inner linings or padding that has not survived. If so then you'd expect to find the same shoe styles across the entire region, not just in one settlement. Also why don't we see the same practice in colder parts of the empire, such as the Alps? The Roman Empire was the first Illuminati occupation state to reach Great Britain. Maybe they were doing simple breeding experiments to create a race of giants. Perhaps they had found such a natural race and had deliberately moved them to, what was for them, a remote frontier, the Guantanamo Bay of the Roman world. They were the Roman equivalent of supersoldiers. We know this was going on in other parts of the world in previous ages, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2013/10/giants-found-in-iraq.html. Maybe it was a natural genetic mutation. However, contrary to popular belief, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/10/cvd-is-ruining-wales.html, the modern Geordies are primarily descended from the people who lived in that area back in those days; and their feet seem to be normal sized, so if it was a natural genetic mutation it has been eradicated. Possibly it was caused by local inbreeding. People didn't travel around as much in those days as they do today. Either way, it's a very interesting science news story.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2025/02/boudica-portal.html.