These 60,000-year-old poison arrows are oldest yet found 39d ago

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest direct evidence of poisoned projectiles, with traces of plant-based poison found on 60,000-year-old quartz arrowheads unearthed in South Africa's Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter site. The poison is believed to be derived from the milky bulb extract of the *Boophone disticha* plant, also known as gifbol or poisonous onion, which contains lethal compounds like buphandrine and epibuphanisine. This discovery pushes back the timeline for the use of poison arrows into the Pleistocene era, indicating a cognitively complex hunting strategy involving advanced planning and causal reasoning. Previous earliest direct evidence of poisoned arrows dated to the mid-Holocene, making this finding significantly older and providing insight into the long-standing understanding of plant properties by ancient hunter-gatherers.
















