60,000-Year-Old Poisoned Arrowheads From Southern Africa Reveal Ancient Hunting Strategy

A collection of ancient arrowheads from southern Africa has retained evidence of toxic plant residue for around 60,000 years.

This finding moves the earliest direct proof of poisoned arrows back by many tens of thousands of years.

Although the toxin was not instantly lethal, the researchers say the poison preserved on the arrowheads could kill a rodent in roughly 30 minutes. Hunters probably used it to weaken prey, allowing people to follow animals more effectively.

Until now, the oldest poisoned arrows identified in Africa belonged to the mid-Holocene, about 7,000 years ago.

Poisoned arrowheads and hunter-gatherer technology

"Poisoned weapons are a hallmark of advanced hunter-gatherer technology," write an international team of researchers from universities in Sweden and South Africa.

"Apart from providing the first evidence of hunting with poisoned arrows during the late-Pleistocene in southern Africa," they add, "our findings contribute to the understanding of human adaptation and technobehavioral complexity during a phase of rapid, cumulative innovation in the region."

The old arrow tips were originally excavated in 1985 at Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. However, they then remained unexamined in a museum for decades.

Scientists from Stockholm University, Linnaeus University and the University of Johannesburg have now analysed 10 arrowheads from the collection that carried visible residue.

Using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, the international research group detected toxic compounds of plant origin on several arrowheads. This is the first direct evidence that poisonous plant material was present on Pleistocene hunting weapons.

Boophone disticha toxin identified on ancient arrows

The most probable source of the poison is Boophone disticha, a common southern African plant. Historical records describe local people using it as an arrow poison when hunting animals including springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis).

Some researchers had previously suggested that Late Pleistocene bowhunting in southern Africa probably involved poison. Yet the available evidence had largely consisted of mechanical indicators and possible traces of plant residue, both of which remained uncertain.

Swedish archaeologist Sven Isaksson of Stockholm University headed the new research, which set out to examine that proposal.

For years, he and his fellow researchers have worked to recover unambiguous proof of plant poison from arrowheads only hundreds of years old. They have now applied those techniques to artefacts that are thousands of years older.

In the end, five of the 60,000-year-old arrowheads contained traces of buphandrine, a toxic plant alkaloid also identified on poisoned arrow tips dating from 250 years ago.

Researchers also detected another toxic alkaloid, epibuphanisine, on one of the ancient arrowheads. In their published study, Isaksson and his colleagues write that this "cannot be coincidental."

Both buphandrine and epibuphanisine occur in the leaves of B. disticha. Among 269 historically documented bowhunting groups in southern Africa, 168 are known to have used poisoned arrows.

Evidence of sophisticated Late Pleistocene hunting

Finding remains of these toxins on arrowheads about 60,000 years old indicates that this resourceful means of subsistence has extremely deep roots.

"Because poison is not a physical force, but functions chemically, the hunters must also have relied on advanced planning, abstraction, and causal reasoning," the study authors speculate.

Even before this result, Marlize Lombard of the University of Johannesburg, one of the paper's authors, had argued that it was reasonable to assume southern African hunter-gatherers used poisoned arrow tips around 60,000 years ago, if not earlier.

In a research article published in 2025, she noted that people in the region already recognised and used plants for food, medicine and insect repellent at that time. Why would they not also have known about and used poisonous plants?

Scientists recently found evidence that Neanderthals produced complex glues from plant material around 200,000 years ago.

The ingenuity of ancient hominins continues to be surprising.

The study was published in Science Advances.