STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN—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.
