Poisoned arrows from 60,000 years ago have been found in Africa. Until now, the oldest poisoned arrows dated to 8,000 years ago. Because using poison requires knowledge of plants, this is analyzed as evidence that plants have long been used for diverse purposes beyond food, including poison and medicine.
A team led by Sven Isaksson, a professor at Stockholm University in Sweden, said on Jan. 8 in the journal Science Advances that it found plant-derived toxic substances on five 60,000-year-old quartzite arrowheads excavated from a Stone Age site in South Africa.
◇Efficient hunting of large animals with poisoned arrows
The team examined 10 microliths found in 1985 at the Umhlatuzana site in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. They were sharp stone fragments about 1 centimeter in diameter. Analysis of chemicals on their surfaces found traces of a toxic compound called buphandrin on five of them.
Buphandrin is a substance in a local native plant called Boophone disticha. This plant is commonly called the poison bulb. The milky secretion from its root bulb can kill a rat in 30 minutes with only a small amount and can cause nausea and coma in humans. Even if it does not kill large animals immediately, it can slow their movements, giving hunters time to track them.
The team also tested arrows collected by Carl Peter Thunberg, a Swedish naturalist who visited South Africa in the 1770s. He left records that local hunters used poisoned arrows. Tests found toxic substances from the same plant on these arrowheads as well.
The use of poisoned arrows shows that human hunting efficiency was high long ago. If animals are killed by physical impact from an arrow, large animals are hard to take. But using poison allows hunters to take large animals without the risk of counterattacks from prey. The San, known as bushmen for living in the bush, in southern Africa still use the toxic substances found on the 60,000-year-old arrowheads for hunting today. With small poisoned arrows, they hunt springbok antelope, wildebeest and zebra, and even giraffes.
◇Evidence that plant use was diverse
Until recently, the oldest known poisoned arrows dated to about 8,000 years ago. Then in 2020, Marlize Lombard, a professor at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, reported that 50,000–80,000-year-old arrowheads match the design of poisoned arrowheads used by the San over the past 150 years. If so, poisoned arrows may have been used tens of thousands of years ago much as they are now.
At the time, the team found that a 60,000-year-old bone arrowhead was covered with a viscous liquid, but it did not conclusively prove the presence of poison. This time, they captured definitive chemical evidence. Lombard, a co-author of the new paper, said, "If it had been found on only a single artifact, it could be a coincidence," adding, "But finding it on five of the 10 artifacts examined is remarkable and shows that poison was intentionally applied 60,000 years ago."
Scientists said the greater significance of this discovery lies not in the stone tools themselves but in finding evidence that humans have long applied knowledge of plants. April Nowell, a professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, also noted, "On the surface, this paper seems to be about hunting technology, but in reality it is about knowledge of plants," adding, "Over the past 20 years of research, it has been shown that early humans used plants for textile dyeing and treatment purposes beyond food."
Isaksson said, "We know well that humans have long used plants for food and tools, but this discovery is another dimension of use in that it harnessed biochemical properties of plants such as drugs, medicines and poisons." The team inferred that people tens of thousands of years ago discovered the poison after seeing that eating Boophone bulbs caused illness or death. Boophone also has preservative, antibacterial and hallucinogenic properties and is used in traditional medicine, and cases of human death from overdoses still occur.
References
Science Advances (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adz3281
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2020), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102477