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Archaeologists Keep Finding Massive Shoes at an Ancient Roman Fort—and They Have No Idea Why They're So Big
(www.smithsonianmag.com)
They had big feet?
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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True if big
First we need to spend 100k on researcher and publish at least 20 articles.
But yes, big feet.
Publish or perish, amirite?
Publish, perish, or podiatrist.
And maybe hung? :)
Foot size is not particularly correlated to dick size- and wouldn’t have necessarily been a boon if he were. Apparently Roman woman preferred smallish dicks. (Which is why all the Roman statues of gods were lacking by today’s standards.)
iirc large dicks were seen as brutish and savage by everyone, as if you had no control over your primal, animalistic urges and just wanted to fuck all the time. small pp = civilized.
And this is also why 'black people have big dicks' is a historical stereotype. Sure they have big dicks, like horses or cattle...
And it's a weird thing where people now think it's a 'positive' stereotype
I remember a Man U chant about a player having a big dick - anti-racism organisations called it out and the chanters were shocked. It's a 'positive' thing, right?
History is kinda weird and very racist
there's a conversation to have regarding reclaiming oppressive words and ideas, but it has to be driven by those being oppressed in order to really work and be felt by society as a whole as acceptable
Iirc high libido was also seen as a feminine trait
I can see it. the underlying principle is control of oneself so anything that implies otherwise was faux pas/taboo
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ancient romans and greeks be like “look at this uncivilized oaf with his ridiculously huge dick, what a barbarian”
@rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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Biggus Dickus' shoes.
He had a wife...
Incontinentia… Incontinentia Buttocks
Maybe it's a gag? Romans had memes and there are a lot of beings in Roman and Greek mythology that are essentially just oversized humanoids, so maybe the shoes are tied to some sort of mythological in-joke at the fort.
Maybe part of a psy-op?
Spread rumours the fort is defended by giants, have your troops bring these out to leave tracks... Don't know how feasible that would be though, both in terms of leaving tracks in places you wouldn't be observed doing so and in terms of them being believable enough for an actual tracker to believe.
Hey Nero look how big i made this shoe hahahahahaha
I mean ... maybe they had to keep some uniforms there for new recruits. and the biggest sandals rarely got used and got left behind when Rome abandoned the isles ?
Weren’t they expected to provide their own equipment unless they were at least a certain rank?
New recruits were provided basic equipment, and the cost was deducted from their pay. Sandals would fall under this for sure.
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That shoe’s sole was 12.6 inches long, which is roughly the same size as a men’s 14 in the United States, reports Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove.
That is smaller than my shoe size, those scientists have a dumb frame of reference.
Not my fault everyone else has weird and tiny feet.
Considering 6' people were rare 150 years ago, I'd imagine a size 14 would have been crazy 2,000 years ago.
Kind of rare, but not exactly unheard of. Kinda like anyone taller than 6' 8" these days. If you saw them, you might think "Wow, they're tall" but you wouldnt think of them as freakish.
Combine that with this being a Roman fort, and the fact that being a soldier was probably a pretty common job for big/strong men, and it's really not that surprising. Kind of a nothing story really. Imagine a bunch of future archeologists scratching their heads over finding a bunch of large shoes in an NBA locker room.
They were also shorter on average than modern humans. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/17072/what-was-the-average-height-of-roman-men-and-women
They also lived shorter on average. Some of them still reached a very old age. The average really doesn‘t tell us that much about the extremes that existed.
That's because of high infant/childhood mortality rates skewing the average. If you take away anyone who died before age 5, the average age shoots up to like 70+ in most places. Not too different from today.
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Since May, archaeologists working at Magna have unearthed eight massive leather shoes that each measure more than 11.8 inches long.
So four pairs? Was there one gigantic dude there that kept losing his shoes?
11.8 inches is about 30 cm or size 47 in the european system. Which is big but not unheard of. I personally know 2 people wearing similar shoe sizes. Very possible it's just one guy who kept losing shoes.
We are longer on average now, so I'd argue size 47 is also more common now though. Making the 'it's just one guy'-theory even more likely.
That is a size 13 US which is a relatively common shoe size among men with big feet. Looking at the photo I could tell it was about the size of my shoes.
A mens shoe isnt really particularly large until you get to the limited sizes, like 14 or 15, where dudes have like two shoe options to choose from at any given shoe store. Pretty much every mens shoe is made in sizes up to a 13 consistently
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11.8 inches is about a foot.
"It's not 12", but it smells like a foot."
Just like my penis
I'd never really thought about this, but most people's feet are significantly shorter than a foot, aren't they?
Yep! I have heard that the Romans had big feet, though.
You mean 29 31/32 cm
Potayto Potahto
Big dick is the likely explanation.
Oh so they found where Biggus Dickus was stationed.
He goes by Biggus Dickus.
He has a wife you know ‽
Spoiler alert: it was the main clown college in the Roman empire.
But seriously, that's interesting.
dons foil hat
It was for the giants. Cultures across the world have myths of giants. If any of those myths are based in reality, these big shoes could have been for the descendants of the giants that have interbred with us humans over the ages. By the time of Hadrian's wall these part giants would have been nothing more than large humans.
And I'm still wondering why they are still wondering. So they are digging out oversized Caligae. You know that Caligae are? They are sandals. And they are digging them up at a fort at Hadrians Wall. Up in Scotland. Where things get cold occasionally.
Now imagine soldiers, standing guard or patrolling in the cold, wearing sandals. What would they do? They'd wrap up their feet in something warm, like lamb furs. Or cloth. But wadded up feet don't fit into standard-sized sandals designed for bare feet. Solution, rather obvious, is having oversized sandals that fit feet and insulation.
They just wanted the shoes to last. Make they quality. Many layers.
Gigantic? Massive? I was expecting hilariously big sizes, turned out to be my shoe size. Wtf. Is that insane that this particular fort had conscripts that were selected just because they were taller? Other cultures have preferred taller, bulkier soldiers, why this can't be the case?
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