London, June 10 (IANS) Archaeologists have found the world's oldest shoe dating back to 5,500 years in an Armenian cave.

The shoe made from a single piece of cowhide can fit a woman's foot although it may have been worn by a man at the time, the researchers said.

It was made a thousand years before the Great Pyramid of Giza was built and four hundred years earlier than the erection of Stonehenge, though the shoe is in perfect condition, including its laces, due to cool and dry conditions of the cave.

"It is an amazing find. We thought we were looking at something just a few hundred years old but it turns out to be the oldest shoe ever found," Ron Pinhasi, an archaeologist at the University College Cork, was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

The shoe was packed with grass and it is unclear whether it was used to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe, much like the modern shoe-tree.

Dr Pinhasi, said: "It was only when the material was dated by the two radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford and California that we realised that the shoe was older by a few hundred years than the shoes worn by Otzi, the Iceman".

Otzi lived about 5,300 years ago and his mummified remains were found in 1991 in the Otztal Alps, on the border between Austria and Italy.

Other items found in the cave in the Vayotz Dzor province on the Iranian border included large containers, many of which held well-preserved wheat and barley, apricots and other edible plants.

Diana Zardaryan, of the Institute of Archaeology, Armenia, who made the discovery in a pit that also included a broken pot and sheep's horns, said: "I was amazed to find that even the shoelaces were preserved".

The oldest known footwear in the world are 8,000-year-old makeshift sandals made of plant material that were found in a cave in Missouri about fifty years ago.