Arrow tips found in South Africa are the oldest evidence of poison use in hunting
The discovery that small stone arrow tips were treated with plant poison 60,000 years ago means that ancient African hunters were capable of complex thinking.
theconversation.com
The oldest evidence for the use of arrow poison globally was long thought to come from Egypt, dating to 4,000 years ago. It was a black, toxic residue on bone arrowheads from a tomb at the Naga ed Der archaeological site.
New evidence from southern Africa is challenging this.
New research has found poison on stone arrow tips from South Africa dating to 60,000 years ago. It is the oldest direct evidence for hunting with poisoned arrows.
This adds to what is already known about the know-how of ancient African bowhunters. These abilities may have contributed to our species’ long and flourishing evolution in the region and ultimately the successful spread of Homo sapiens out of Africa.
Hunter-gatherers in southern Africa
The evidence comes from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter, in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. The site was partly excavated in the 1980s to preserve archaeological material that could be damaged during the construction of the N3 highway between the cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg.Umhlatuzana is recognised as an important Stone Age site where hunter-gatherers lived at least 70,000 years ago. It is one of only a few sites in southern Africa where people continued to live until just a few thousand years ago.
In southern Africa, people have a long history of hunting with poisoned arrows. For example, a team of South African and Swedish archaeologists found residues on arrow tips dating to between a few centuries and 1,000 years ago that revealed how different arrow poison recipes were used.
Recently, three bone arrowheads stored in a poison-filled bone container were reported from Kruger Cave in South Africa, dating to almost 7,000 years ago. This pushed back direct molecular evidence of arrow poison use to about 3,000 years before the Egyptian poisoned arrows.
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