Perhaps the world's oldest weapons equipped with a multi-ingredient poison cocktail, these arrowheads were laced with deadly ricin as well as digitoxin and strophanthidin, which can stop the heart.
Dr Aliénor DuhamelA scan of the 7,000-year-old antelope femur that contained the three poison-coated arrowheads.
In 1983, archaeologists excavated Kruger Cave in South Africa and found a 7,000-year-old femur bone that belonged to an antelope. Researchers then noted something unusual about the bone: three bone arrowheads had been embedded into its marrow cavity.
However, researchers at the time did not follow through with a more thorough examination of these arrowheads. In fact, the bone was tucked away in storage at the University of Witwatersrand for nearly four decades until new archaeological investigations at Kruger Cave in 2022 prompted a re-examination of the femur and the arrowheads embedded within it.
This re-examination, led by Justin Bradfield of the University of Johannesburg, unveiled revelatory information about the hunting capabilities of prehistoric humans.
The team discovered that the arrowheads had been coated with a complex, multi-component hunting poison made with plants not native to the Kruger Cave area. This discovery shows that not only were these prehistoric humans technologically-advanced hunters, but they also may have had an extensive trade network to source the various plants used to make their poisons.
This find may represent the world’s oldest confirmed use of a poison cocktail specifically applied to arrowheads.
7,000-Year-Old Poison Arrows Found In The Antelope Femur Unearthed In Kruger Cave
Long after the archaeologists in 1983 declined to study the arrowheads, Bradfield and his colleagues believed they could learn more from these artifacts.
Writing for The Conversation, Bradfield says, “Along with other scientists from the University of Johannesburg, I suspected that the femur contained more than just sediment and degraded marrow… Our research has revealed that the femur’s contents are arguably the oldest multi-component arrow poison in the world. It’s a complex recipe combining at least two toxic plant ingredients. There’s also evidence of a third toxin.”
Bradfield clarifies that the use of poison for hunting is much older than these arrowheads, with evidence suggesting that some poisons were used as far back as 70,000 years ago. However, much of that evidence is “tentative at best and yet to be verified chemically.”
Through their analysis, Bradfield’s team learned that the arrowheads had been coated with a poison mixture that used at least two toxic plant ingredients, including cardiac glycosides known to disrupt heart function. In particular, they identified the presence of digitoxin and strophanthidin, which have been used historically in poisons associated with bow hunting, and ricinoleic acid, a byproduct of the toxic lectin ricin.
Bradfield, Duber, and Steenkamp.Kruger Cave in South Africa, marked where the antelope femur was discovered.
These compounds are found in separate plants, ones that do not occur naturally in the area surrounding Kruger Cave. Remains of these plants were also not found on any of the other materials excavated from Kruger Cave. According to Bradfield, this could suggest that the prehistoric hunters who crafted this poison either traveled a great distance to acquire the plants, or that there had once been an established, long-distance trade network for exchanging such plants.
“Researchers know that long-distance transport of sea shells, as ornaments and later as currency, had been happening throughout Africa long before 7,000 years ago. But the long-distance movement of non-domestic plants at so early a date is something we had not expected,” Bradfield writes. “The fact that people knew which plants to acquire, where to find them and how to use them effectively speaks volumes about the antiquity of traditional pharmacological knowledge systems.”
In either case, this research suggests — as much recent research has — that humans’ prehistoric ancestors were far more advanced than even many of the experts thought.
How The Use Of Poison In Hunting Marked A Major Step Forward In Humans’ Prehistoric Development
Dr Aliénor DuhamelBradfield believes the marrow in the femur bone may have helped to preserve the poison compounds for all these years.
Creating an effective poison was not necessarily a simple task. It required a vast amount of botanical and pharmacological knowledge. Prehistoric humans would have needed to know how to identify toxic plants, where to find them, and which combinations yielded the best results. That may sound simple enough, but keep in mind that this was a time before writing even existed, thus there was no catalog or field guide to reference.
The use of poisons for hunting has been documented across various cultures worldwide, as has the widespread use of various plants as medicines or adhesives. The practical use of various plants played a major role in the evolution of humankind, with hunting poisons in particular marking a major advancement of early technological innovation. Though this is not the oldest hunting poison on record, it is a remarkably solid confirmation that prehistoric humans did indeed utilize poison-coated arrows in their hunts.
As the researchers wrote, “To date, there have been several attempts to identify putative poisons on stone and bone arrowheads with varying degrees of confidence.”
But now, researchers have confirmed evidence of prehistoric hunting points and definitive identification of what those poisons were.
After reading about one of the world’s oldest poison arrows, learn about nine of the world’s oldest structures and the stories behind them. Then, read about 11 of Earth’s most unbelievable prehistoric animals.
