60,000-year-old poison arrowheads show early humans' skillful hunting in South Africa or 50,000 years earlier than previously known

Amazing stuff! Our distant ancestors were more clever than we thought!

"... The five 60,000-year-old quartz arrowheads still have traces of a poison made from a bulbous flowering plant named gifbol (Boophone disticha), also called “poisonous onion,” that was used until recent centuries by traditional hunters. ..."

From the abstract:

"Poisoned weapons are a hallmark of advanced hunter-gatherer technology. Through targeted microchemical and biomolecular analyses, we identified traces of toxic plant alkaloids on backed microliths from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, excavated from a level dated to 60,000 years ago. The alkaloids buphandrine and epibuphanisine only originate from Amaryllidaceae indigenous to southern Africa. The most likely source is Boophone disticha (L.f.) Herb. bulb exudate, also associated with historically documented arrow poisons. To our knowledge, we present the first direct evidence for the application of this plant-based poison on the tips of Pleistocene hunting weapons. The discovery highlights the complexity of subsistence strategies and cognition in southern Africa since the mid-Pleistocene."

60,000-year-old poison arrowheads show early humans' skillful hunting "The South Africa find pushes the timeline for poisoned weapons back more than 50,000 years"

Direct evidence for poison use on microlithic arrowheads in Southern Africa at 60,000 years ago (open access)

Organic residues on ancient stone points (the orange material visible in the view on the left) still contain traces of a plant-based poison after 60,000 years in the ground, a new analysis shows.

Fig. 1. Boophone disticha (L.f.) Herb., microlithic arrowhead, and Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter.