Last week, we found the eye to be one of the most powerful human body parts, with all sorts of legends and symbols dedicated to it. Today, we’re heading to two of the most overworked, underrated parts of the body – the feet.
Click start to play today’s Crossword, which tests your knowledge of leg and foot muscles.
The US Department of Health and Human Services recommends 150 minutes a week or 21 minutes a day of moderate-intensity exercise, such as brisk walking. If you love to walk and have a pedometer or an app that counts your steps, you’ve probably already tried reaching a daily goal of 10,000 steps. Reach it consistently, every day in your lifetime, and it will equate to taking four trips around the world!
That’s a lot of wear and tear for our intricate feet bones. Even our ancestors understood the importance of taking care of their feet. The oldest preserved shoes known to archaeologists is a pair of leather moccasins found embedded in sheep droppings in a cave in Armenia. The shoes were 5,500 years old.
But those aren't the oldest shoes to exist. According to a 2009 study published by the Archaeological Institute of America, researchers analysed foot bones from Neanderthals, and discovered that humans started wearing shoes as early as 40,000 years ago.
Coming back to the modern age, no shoes probably go through the grind as much as delicate looking pointe shoes, worn by ballerinas. Although they appear dainty, pointe shoes actually have a rigid box at the tip of the shoe, made of densely packed layers of fabric, cardboard or paper that is hardened by glue. Dancers rely on pointe shoes to be strong and secure, because the entire weight of their body rests on the small platform in the tip of the shoes.
According to US-based Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, a professional ballerina sometimes wears out her shoes in just one performance, depending on the difficulty of the ballet. Many often dance through 100 to 120 pairs of pointe shoes in one season!
Play today’s Crossword and let us know if you enjoyed it at games@gulfnews.com.
