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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."
Many toxins that affect the nervous system if injected into the circulatory system are harmless if ingested into the digestive system, and most are readily digested. OTOH, most digestible substances injected into one’s blood are no good. Inject a pint of milk into your blood and you likely won’t survive it.
I looked up both compounds and they are chemically stable in soil. Interesting...
Unless the meat was cooked well done.
That is interesting. 60k years seems like a long time, to me, for a compound created by a plant (or animal) to resist the wear and tear of exposure. But I know little about chemistry much less bio-chemistry.
Preservation does have a lot to do with how an object or substance is sheltered and how quickly it gets sheltered.
That mega-slime inducing Xanthan gum ingredient is as popular high fructose corn syrup in processed foods. Maybe 0.1 gram of that stuff injected into a vein would cause a congealed blood heart attack in minutes. Being in so many foods, would that even raise a suspicion during an autopsy?
I’m confused. How is the precession period of the Earth’s poles significant? It seems to me unrelated.
The precession period of the Earth results in dramatic changes in climate over the 27,000 year period. You've probably heard of the Sahara desert being a jungle at one time - that is attributed to the Earth's precession period.
So, basically, the 70,000 year age of the poison covers of two full precession periods, and if that arrowhead was found in Africa, it causes a person to wonder if the area was "huntable" during that time frame.
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