Discovery in South Africa holds oldest evidence of mixing ingredients to make arrow poison
This is the oldest confirmed use of a mixture comprising two or more plant toxins specifically applied to arrowheads.
theconversation.com
In 1983 archaeologists excavating a cave in South Africa discovered an unusual femur bone. It belonged to an unspecified antelope and was found to be 7,000 years old. X-rays revealed that three modified bone arrowheads had been placed into the marrow cavity.
At the conclusion of the 1983 excavation the bone, together with other artifacts recovered from the cave, was placed in the University of the Witwatersrand’s Archaeology Department storerooms. It lay there until 2022. That’s when new archaeological investigations began at the site where the femur had been discovered: Kruger Cave, in the western Magaliesberg mountains, about 1.5 hours’ drive from Johannesburg. This renewed interest prompted scientists to take a fresh look at Kruger Cave’s treasures.
I am an archaeologist who’s interested in the organic materials preserved at Kruger Cave and in protecting the site for future generations. Along with other scientists from the University of Johannesburg, I suspected that the femur contained more than just sediment and degraded marrow. We had worked together to publish the chemical constituents of a 500-year-old medicine container discovered in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and decided to conduct a similar investigation into the chemistry of the matrix surrounding the arrowheads inside the femur.
Our research has revealed that the femur’s contents are arguably the oldest multi-component arrow poison in the world. It’s a complex recipe combining at least two toxic plant ingredients. There’s also evidence of a third toxin....
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