“Archaeologists Unearth Ancient Mystery: 7,000-Year-Old Poison Arrowheads Discovered in South African Cave’s Strangest Find!”
Through their analysis, Bradfield’s team learned that the arrowheads had been coated with a poison mixture that used at least two toxic plant ingredients, including cardiac glycosides known to disrupt heart function. In particular, they identified the presence of digitoxin and strophanthidin, which have been used historically in poisons associated with bow hunting, and ricinoleic acid, a byproduct of the toxic lectin ricin.
Bradfield, Duber, and Steenkamp.Kruger Cave in South Africa, marked where the antelope femur was discovered.
These compounds are found in separate plants, ones that do not occur naturally in the area surrounding Kruger Cave. Remains of these plants were also not found on any of the other materials excavated from Kruger Cave. According to Bradfield, this could suggest that the prehistoric hunters who crafted this poison either traveled a great distance to acquire the plants, or that there had once been an established, long-distance trade network for exchanging such plants.
“Researchers know that long-distance transport of sea shells, as ornaments and later as currency, had been happening throughout Africa long before 7,000 years ago. But the long-distance movement of non-domestic plants at so early a date is something we had not expected,” Bradfield writes. “The fact that people knew which plants to acquire, where to find them and how to use them effectively speaks volumes about the antiquity of traditional pharmacological knowledge systems.”
In either case, this research suggests — as much recent research has — that humans’ prehistoric ancestors were far more advanced than even many of the experts thought.
