CNN
 — 

An ancient Roman mystery is afoot in the rolling hills of northern Britain.

Archaeologists have unearthed a stash of unusually large shoes at the ruins of a first-century military fort along Hadrian’s Wall, a 73-mile (117-kilometer) stone barrier that famously shielded the Roman Empire’s northwestern perimeter from foreign invaders. The discovery is raising new questions about the lives and origins of the fort’s inhabitants.

The giant leather soles were found at Magna Fort in May among 34 pieces of footwear, including work boots and baby-sized shoes, that are helping to paint a picture of the 4,000 men, women and children who once lived in and around the English site just south of the Scottish border.

Eight of the shoes are over 11.8 inches (30 centimeters) in length — a US men’s size 13.5 or greater based on Nike’s size chart — making them larger than average by today’s standard and sparking suspicions that unusually tall troops may have guarded this particular fortress at the empire’s edge.

By contrast, the average ancient shoe found at a neighboring Roman fort was closer to a US men’s size 8, according to a news release about the discovery.

“When the first large shoe started to come out of the ground, we were looking for many explanations, like maybe it’s their winter shoes, or people were stuffing them, wearing extra socks,” recalled Rachel Frame, a senior archaeologist leading the excavation. “But as we found more of them and different styles, it does seem to be that these (were) just people with really large feet.”

As digging continues at Magna Fort, Frame said she hopes further investigation could answer who exactly wore these giant shoes. A basic sketch of the site’s past is just starting to come together.

When the Magna Fort was in use, multiple different Roman military troops and their families moved into the site every few years after it was built around AD 85, archaeologists suspect.

Inscriptions on the fort’s walls and altars recount settlements of Hamian archers from what is now Syria, Dalmatian mountain soldiers from Croatia and Serbia, and Batavians from the Netherlands, but the length of time each group stayed at the stronghold remains unknown.

Likely following orders from the Roman army, the troops would often leave the fort for distant regions and in their haste, ditch shoes, clothing and other belongings in the surrounding trenches, Frame explained.

Additionally, new occupants requiring more space would have built larger structures on top of the existing fort, packing rubble and clay between the walls and trapping any belongings left by the previous tenants, Frame said.

“As archaeologists, we like trash,” said Dr. Elizabeth Greene, an associate professor of classics at the University of Western Ontario. “You get those habitational layers where things were just left behind, maybe forgotten about, and that tells us more about the space.” Greene has studied thousands of shoes collected from the nearby Vindolanda Roman Fort, which has been excavated since the 1970s and is among the most well-studied of the Roman forts along Hadrian’s Wall.

The recently discovered Magna shoes share some similarities with those in the Vindolanda Fort collection, said Greene, who was not involved in the Magna excavation process, but has viewed the artifacts.

For one, the soles of the shoes from both sites are made from thick layers of cowhide leather held together with iron hobnails, she explained. While only a couple of the shoes discovered at Magna have some of the upper portions still intact, the Vindolanda Fort shoe styles include closed military boots and open work boots, as well as sneaker-like shoes reaching just below the ankle and sandals with leather fasteners.

It’s likely that the leather soles of the Magna shoes survived thousands of years in the ground thanks to ancient tanning techniques that used crushed up vegetative matter to create a water and heat resistant coating, Greene said. Testing is still underway to confirm this hypothesis.

The length of the extra-large Magna shoes suggests the original owners may have been exceptionally tall, Greene said. At Vindolanda, only 16 out of the 3,704 shoes collected measured over 11.8 inches (30 centimeters).

Ancient Roman military manuals often described the ideal recruit as being only 5 feet, 8 inches or 5 feet, 9 inches in height, according to Rob Collins, a professor of frontier archaeology at Newcastle University in England. But the soldiers stationed around Hadrian’s Wall came from all around the far-reaching empire, bringing a wide diversity of physical traits to their settlements, he said.

Still, why Magna specifically might have needed troops of towering stature remains unclear.

To piece together the shoe owners’ identities, researchers will examine the Magna shoes for any signs of wear, Frame said. Any foot impressions left in the shoes could be used to model the feet of the original wearers.

Linking the shoes to real human remains, however, could prove difficult. For one, the Romans near Hadrian’s Wall generally cremated their dead, using a headstone to mark the graves, Collins said. Any bones that remain around the settlements are likely from enemy, illegal or accidental burials.

So far, the few bones that have been found at the Magna site were too soft and crumbly to provide insight, Frame said, but the team continues to search for new burial spots. Pottery and other artifacts found around the site may also help with dating and matching the timelines of the known occupants, she said.

But the researchers worry they could be running out of time.

The 2,000-year-old leather found at both the Vindolanda and Magna sites is preserved by the anaerobic, or low-oxygen, conditions of the soil, Frame said.

The 34 shoes found at the Magna fort, however, are in worse condition than those retrieved from Vindolanda decades ago — a problem Frame attributes to the changing climate.

“The more our climate changes, the more we get heat waves and droughts, or months’ worth of rain in one weekend type (of) scenarios, the more that influences the underground soil conditions and introduces more oxygen into these environments,” Frame explained.

In oxygen-rich soil, microbes thrive, contributing to decay, and acidic pH levels erode natural materials like leather.

Frame said the rapid weather changes only make their excavation of Magna more urgent.

“I’m not saying I don’t get excited about the shiny objects and precious treasures, but for me, archaeology is about the story of everybody else … the stories of the people whose lives weren’t written down, who weren’t kings or emperors or famous heroes,” she said. “These personal objects really put the real human people back into the picture.”

Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

Poland has finalized a deal to acquire a second batch of 180 South Korean tanks under a 2022 agreement that will eventually see Warsaw boost its arsenal with almost 1,000 of the armored vehicles.

The deal underlines Poland’s emergence as a substantial European military force, as well as South Korea’s status as a major arms supplier – especially to US allies as wars around the world exhaust American stockpiles.

It comes as Russia ramps up attacks on Ukraine, some of which have come within 100 miles of Polish territory on Ukraine’s western border.

Warsaw has been increasing defense spending since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, acquiring new weaponry while also helping Kyiv with its defense.

As a NATO member bordering Ukraine, it is seen part of the alliance’s first line of defense should Russian leader Vladimir Putin decide to expand his aggression beyond Ukraine.

Poland’s Defense Ministry announced the tank deal, which still needs to be formally signed, in a post on social media platform X earlier this month.

It put the price tag at $6.7 billion and said that includes 80 support vehicles, ammunition, and logistics and training packages for the Polish Army.

The deal for the K2 main battle tanks, regarded as among the world’s most powerful, includes units to be made in South Korea by defense giant Hyundai Rotem and the establishment of a production line in Poland for a Polish variant, the K2PL, according to South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), which oversees Seoul’s foreign military sales.

Sixty of the batch of 180 tanks will be built in Poland, the Polish Defense Ministry’s post on X said. The first 30 of the South Korea-made tanks included in the new contract are expected to arrive in Poland next year, it said.

In 2022, the two countries signed a deal for Poland to get 180 K2s. All but about 45 of those have been delivered, with the remainder expected to arrive in Poland by the end of the year, Hyundai Rotem said.

That framework was considered South Korea’s biggest overseas defense deal ever. It included a total of 980 K2s, 648 self-propelled K9 armored howitzers, and 48 FA-50 fighter jets, the Polish Defense Ministry said at the time.

The ministry said the armored vehicles would, in part, replace Soviet-era tanks that Poland has donated to Ukraine to use in its fight against Russia.

A March report from the Wilson Center based in Washington, DC, said Poland has given Ukraine more than 300 tanks and more than 350 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.

Poland has been on edge in recent days after Russia ramped up drone attacks on Ukraine.

A Russian drone barrage against the northwestern Ukrainian city of Lutsk was so intense it caused Warsaw to scramble fighter jets as a precaution. Lutsk is about 50 miles from the Polish border.

A NATO report from April cited Polish efforts to dramatically increase defense spending in the face of the Russian threat. Warsaw’s defense spending has grown from 2.7% of GDP in 2022 to an expected 4.7% in 2025, according to the report.

“Of all NATO allies, it spends the highest percentage of its GDP on defense,” the NATO report said.

It noted Poland’s purchase of South Korean arms to quickly fill gaps left by donations to Ukraine.

The Wilson Center report said Poland has “arguably emerged as Europe’s most capable military power.”

But a May report from the RAND Corp think tank expressed caution over the financing of Poland’s arms buildup.

Many of its purchases are “financed through direct loans from countries supplying equipment,” RAND said, adding: “If securing such loans proves impossible, market financing might be too expensive to turn framework agreements into binding contracts.”

RAND also said Poland faces recruitment challenges, needing to increase troop strength by almost 50% in the next 10 years.

Meanwhile, South Korea has emerged as the world’s 10th-largest arms exporter over the past five years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Over that span, Poland has received 46% of South Korean military exports, followed by the Philippines at 14% and India at 7%, according to the SIPRI’s Trends in International Arms Transfers 2024 report.

As the war in Ukraine has dragged on, as well as Israel’s war in Gaza, US military aid for Ukraine and Israel has drained its arms stockpiles. South Korea is therefore increasingly seen as an option for US allies in need of weapons, according to a 2024 report from the DC-based Stimson Center.

And Seoul’s arms industry may become important to Washington in the future, the report said.

“Increased South Korean defense industrial base capacity, particularly in arms and shipbuilding, has the potential to directly support the United States,” the report said.

Shipbuilding is seen as a particular area of South Korean military industrial strength, and Washington has already seen contracts for maintenance of US Navy supply ships go to South Korean yards as the Navy grapples with a backlog in US shipyards.

Along with the K2 tanks, South Korea has sent 174 K9 howitzers to Poland under the 2022 framework, with 38 remaining to be delivered, according to contractor Hanwha Aerospace.

A second tranche of 152 K9s is in the works, Hanwha said.

Of the 48 FA-50 jets ordered, only 12 have been sent so far, according to manufacturer Korean Aerospace Industries.

CNN
 — 

In a quiet corner of Glasgow’s East End, a radical public health experiment is underway. For the first time in the United Kingdom, people who inject illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine can do so under medical supervision – in a safe environment and indoors.

No arrests. No judgment. No questions about where the drugs came from – only how to make their use less deadly.

The facility, known as the Thistle, opened in January amid mounting political and public health pressure to confront Scotland’s deepening drug crisis. With the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe, Scottish health officials say, there have long been calls for a more pragmatic, compassionate response.

Funded by the devolved Scottish government and modelled on more than 100 similar sites across Europe and North America, the pilot safe drug consumption facility marks a significant departure from the UK’s traditionally punitive approach to illegal drug use.

Dorothy Bain, who heads Scotland’s prosecution service and advises the government, told a UK parliamentary committee in May that “it would not be in the public interest to prosecute users of the Glasgow safer drug consumption facility for possession of drugs for personal use.”

She added that the approach would be kept under review to ensure it “is not causing difficulties, raising the risk of further criminality or having an unlawful impact on the community.”

Supporters describe it as a long-overdue shift toward harm reduction. Critics warn it risks becoming a place where damaging addiction is maintained, not treated.

Located in a low-slung clinical building near the city center, the Thistle is a space where individuals bring their own drugs, prepare them on site, and inject under the watchful eyes of trained staff.

The service provides no substances, nor does it allow drug sharing between users. What it offers instead is clean equipment, medical oversight, and a protected environment for a population who might otherwise use in alleyways, public toilets or dumpster sheds, with the associated risks for themselves and the wider community.

“We’ve had almost 2,500 injections inside the facility,” Dr. Saket Priyadarshi, the clinical lead of the Thistle, told a CNN team who visited the facility in early June. “That’s 2,500 less injections in the community, in parks, alleyways, car parks.”