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Posted on 01/18/2026 6:56:16 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Hunting with poison arrows has been pushed back to 60,000 years ago, according to a Live Science report. Sven Isaksson of Stockholm University and his colleagues detected traces of poison in residues on five quartz arrowheads recovered from South Africa’s Umhlatuzana rock shelter, which was excavated in 1985. The toxin, called buphandrine, would have weakened prey, thus reducing the length of time and amount of energy expended on the hunt. The toxin epibuphanisine was detected on just one of the arrowheads, but both toxins had probably been applied to all of the weapons, Isaksson said. They may have even been derived from the same plant, Boophone disticha, which grows in southern Africa and is known locally today as a source of arrow poison. "Humans have long relied on plants for food and manufacturing tools, but this finding demonstrates the deliberate exploitation of plant biochemical properties,” Isaksson explained. Read the original scholarly article about this resource in Science Advances. To read about the previous earliest known evidence for humans's use of a toxin, go to "First Use of Poison," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
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Two sides of one the arrowheads analyzed, with traces of organic residues (left)Marlize Lombard
If this was 60,000 years ago, it’s made more interesting by the fact that the Earth’s precession period is just under 27,000 years.
Why were they using real poison arrows?
I was also told there wasn’t any math.
I guess that’s not true either.
It amazes me that the organic compounds haven’t degraded beyond recognition in all that time.
Pretty good forensics going on too.
The stone tools will survive for a long time, but indeed, the organic residues are rare, or are at least below the threshold of detection.
Maybe I’m squeamish, but I would not want to eat the meat of an animal killed by a poisoned arrow.
To this day, most human evolution occurs during tribal warfare. Poisoned arrows were certainly used on tribes of illegal immigrants trying to poach food benefits from other people's hunting grounds.
Its not really a poison so much as a drug.
From Wikipedia:
Buphedrone, also known as α-methylamino-butyrophenone (MABP), is a stimulant of the phenethylamine and cathinone chemical classes that was first synthesized in 1928. It is a synthetic analogue of cathinone, a stimulant naturally occurring in the khat plant. Like many other synthetic cathinones (e.g. mephedrone), it is also found in so called “legal highs” (sometimes also called “bath salts”), a class of designer drugs used to bypass legal restrictions.
Africans still chew on khat stems to get high.
"Yeah - we've been around quite a while now."
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