First Shoes Worn 40,000 Years Ago Maggie Koerth-Baker Special to LiveScience LiveScience.com Thu Jun 5, 9:05 AM ET Humans started wearing shoes about 40,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought, new anthropological research suggests. As any good clothes horse knows, the right outfit speaks volumes about the person wearing it. Now, anthropologists are tapping into that knowledge base, looking for the physical changes caused by wearing shoes to figure out when footwear first became fashionable. Turns out, clothes really do make the man (and the woman), at least when it comes to feet. That's because wearing shoes changes the...