In April last year, herders and archeologists in Mongolia discovered an ancient mummy that appeared to be wearing some particularly trendy Adidas trainers. The researchers have now cleaned and restored the fashion-forward mummy, revealing the intricate detail and craftsmanship of her fancy footwear (updated pictures below).
Surprise, surprise, they aren’t actually the oldest pair of Adidas sneakers, but they still don’t polish up half badly. The restoration shows that the footwear is actually a pair of knee-high felt boots that are striped with a black-and-red pattern, featuring leather soles and decorative buckles.
“With these stripes, when the find was made public, they were dubbed as similar to Adidas shoes with the three stripes,” Galbadrakh Enkhbat, director of the Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia, according to the The Siberian Times. “In this sense, they are an interesting object of study for ethnographers, especially so when the style is very modern.”
The Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia restored these mummified remains, who turned out to be a Turkic female seamstress who died in the Altai mountains of Mongolia. On first glance, her discoverers believed she died more than 1,500 years ago, but on second review they say the estimate is closer to 1,100 years ago. It’s thought she died from a heavy blow to the head, judging by evidence of severe trauma present on her skull. The team hope to carry out further DNA and radiocarbon tests to find out more about her life and the times she lived through.
Along with her body, they also discovered an ancient clutch bag, a mirror, a comb, a knife, a saddle, and the remains of an entire horse. That’s quite an impressive haul to be buried with. LIttle did she know, thousands of years later, she would come to be known as the Adidas trainer mummy.