Hunting with arrows soaked in poison has a long tradition. However, it is still unclear how long this toxic hunting technique has been around. Now archaeologists in South Africa have discovered the earliest evidence of poison arrows. In a Stone Age rock shelter they found quartz arrowheads that had traces of a strong plant poison. The hunting weapons, which are around 60,000 years old, show that the early hunters in this region already used advanced strategies.
While Neanderthals and other early humans hunted primarily with spears and spear throwers, the early representatives of our species, Homo sapiens, used a new technique: They hunted their prey with bows and arrows. This gave them greater range and their weapons greater penetration. The oldest finds of arrowheads come from South Africa and are around 70,000 years old. Advanced cutting techniques were necessary to make the small, delicate stone tips. The first evidence of the use of bows and arrows in Europe dates back to around 54,000 years ago in southern France. There, archaeologists have discovered stone points whose design, size and signs of use suggest that they were once mounted on arrows and used for hunting.
“Remarkable innovation in prey hunting”
However, hunting success can be increased even further if the arrowheads are mixed with poison, as is still common practice among some indigenous peoples today. If an animal is hit by such a poison arrow, even a small wound is enough to kill it. “The use of poisoned hunting weapons represented a remarkable innovation in hunting prey,” explain Sven Isaksson from Stockholm University and his colleagues. However, it is unclear when humans first created and used such poison darts.
The oldest clear evidence of poisoned arrowheads to date comes from the post-Ice Age: in an Egyptian grave that is around 4,400 to 4,000 years old, archaeologists found bone arrowheads with residues of toxic glycosides, and bone arrowheads with poison residues from a cave in South Africa that are around 6,700 years old are even older. “For the Pleistocene, evidence of the use of poison in hunting has so far been limited to two finds from the Border Cave in South Africa: an approximately 24,000-year-old ‘venom applicator’ and an approximately 35,000-year-old lump of beeswax with traces of poison,” report Isaksson and his team.
60,000 year old stone tips with plant poison
Now new finds from South Africa are pushing the use of poison darts significantly further into the past. Isaksson’s team discovered quartz arrowheads around 60,000 years old in a Stone Age rock shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, on which residues of a plant poison were still detectable. Chemical analyzes showed, among other things, the presence of the toxic alkaloid buphandrin on the arrowheads. “Finding buphandrin on five of the ten stone points examined cannot be a mere coincidence,” the archaeologists write. The analyzes suggest that this poison comes from the plant Boophone disticha – also known as gifbol (“poison onion”). It is still used today by traditional hunters in the region.
These finds are the earliest evidence of a hunt with poisoned arrows. “This is the oldest direct evidence that humans used arrow poison. It shows that our ancestors in southern Africa not only invented the bow and arrow much earlier than previously thought, but also understood how to harness nature’s chemistry to increase hunting efficiency,” says senior author Marlize Lombard from the University of Johannesburg.
Also interesting: the plant poison used by Stone Age hunters 60,000 years ago does not work instantly. Instead, the light, small poison darts were designed to pierce the skin and deliver the poison into the animal’s bloodstream. “Wounded animals were usually able to continue running for several kilometers and were pursued by the hunters – sometimes for more than a day,” is how the archaeologists describe the hunting practice. The find thus proves that these early hunters not only had technical skills, but also understood that their poison had to take a long time to work. “The use of arrow poison requires planning, patience and an understanding of cause and effect. It is a clear sign of advanced thinking in early humans,” says co-author Anders Högberg of Linnaeus University in Sweden.
Source: Stockholm University; Specialist article: Science Advances, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adz3281