Stone Age humans hunted with poisoned arrows

Researchers have uncovered chemical evidence that humans in what is now South Africa were using poisoned arrows for hunting as far back as 60,000 years ago (Sci. Adv. 2026, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adz3281). “As far as I know, it is the earliest evidence of using arrow poisons” and perhaps even the earliest direct evidence of humans deliberately using poison, says Sven Isaksson, an archaeologist at Stockholm University and coauthor of the study. The analysis was part of a project aimed at studying prehistoric humans’ cognitive and technological evolution in southern Africa, led by the study’s other coauthors, Anders Högberg of Linnaeus University and Marlize Lombard of the University of Johannesburg. Lombard noticed that several of the Pleistocene-era quartz arrowheads she was working with from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in South Africa had a visible residue on them. She wondered if it might be early evidence of poison lacing, so she contacted Isaksson to do chemical analysis.Isaksson used gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to characterize the residues from 10 prehistoric arrowheads; 5 contained traces of buphanidrine, a toxic alkaloid characteristic of native amaryllis species such as Boophone disticha. One arrowhead residue also contained epibuphanisine, a related compound. B. disticha is locally known as “poison bulb,” and there’s extensive documentation of Indigenous people in the region using extracts from the plant as an arrow poison.Isaksson compared the artifacts to poisoned hunting arrows made in the same region in the 18th and 19th centuries CE and to extracts from B. disticha. These more-recent samples contained high levels of