Overview
- An international team reports in Science Advances that five of ten quartz arrowheads from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter carry alkaloids from Boophone disticha dating to about 60,000 years ago.
- The specific compounds buphandrine and epibuphanisine were identified, and the same signature was found on 18th‑century arrows in Swedish collections.
- Researchers confirmed the artifacts’ context with geochemical and magnetic analyses and detected residues using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.
- The discovery moves the earliest direct evidence of poisoned projectiles from roughly 7,000 years ago back to the Late Pleistocene, indicating sophisticated planning and causal reasoning in hunting.
- The authors caution that sample size and preservation biases limit certainty about continuity of use, and they plan further tests at additional sites to gauge scope.