Rosa Rubicondior: Creationism Refuted - Poisoned Arrows 50,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Both sides of one of the arrowheads analysed. The left-hand image shows the organic remains in which the arrowhead residues were identified.

Photo: Marlize Lombard.

World’s oldest arrow poison – 60,000-year-old traces reveal early advanced hunting techniques - Stockholms universitet

Creationism’s Biblical narrative has just become even harder to defend, with news that researchers from South Africa and Sweden, led by Professor Sven Isaksson of the Archaeological Research Laboratory at Stockholm University, have identified the oldest traces of arrow poison yet discovered. These were found on 60,000-year-old quartz arrowheads from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

That is a full 50,000 years before creationist mythology claims the world was created, but entirely consistent with the palaeontological and archaeological evidence that fully modern humans had already evolved in Africa and were developing increasingly sophisticated technologies.

The discovery is reported open access in Science Advances.

The significance of this find is two-fold. Firstly, it shows that early humans had invented the bow and arrow as a hunting weapon much earlier than previously thought. Secondly, it demonstrates that they also understood how to exploit natural toxins — specifically the alkaloids buphanidrine and epibuphanisine — found in the plant Boophone disticha, commonly known as gifbol or “poison onion”. Traces of these compounds had previously been identified on arrowheads only around 250 years old, so this remarkable discovery reveals that the knowledge and use of such poison technology persisted among hunter-gatherer groups for tens of millennia.

Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter and Middle Stone Age Innovation. Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter, located in KwaZulu-Natal on South Africa’s eastern escarpment, is one of the most important archaeological sites for understanding the technological and behavioural sophistication of early Homo sapiens. The shelter preserves an exceptionally long sequence of occupation layers spanning tens of thousands of years, including some of the clearest evidence of innovation during the African Middle Stone Age.

By around 60,000 years ago, modern humans were not merely surviving with crude tools, as caricaturists often suggest. Instead, they were developing complex hunting strategies, advanced weaponry, and chemical knowledge that required planning, experimentation, and cultural transmission.

The Middle Stone Age (MSA)

The Middle Stone Age in Africa (roughly 300,000–30,000 years ago) marks a crucial period in human evolution. It is associated with:

the emergence of anatomically modern humans
increasingly sophisticated stone tool industries
symbolic behaviour and cultural traditions
long-distance movement of materials
the development of composite tools and projectile weapons

Umhlatuzana is particularly significant because it provides early evidence of microlithic technology — small, carefully shaped stone points that could be hafted onto shafts to form arrows or darts.

Poison Technology and Cumulative Culture

The detection of plant-derived alkaloids on these arrowheads shows that early humans were not only inventing weapons but also enhancing them chemically. The use of poisons implies:

detailed ecological knowledge of toxic plants
careful preparation and handling
deliberate application to hunting tools
transmission of specialised knowledge across generations

This is an example of cumulative cultural evolution: innovations building gradually over time, with knowledge preserved and refined rather than appearing suddenly.

A Problem for Creationist Timelines

Such evidence is devastating for the claim that humans only appeared a few thousand years ago, fully formed, after a recent special creation. Instead, archaeology reveals:

continuous technological development over tens of millennia
behavioural complexity deep in the Pleistocene
human societies adapting through innovation long before the rise of agriculture or civilisation

Far from being “primitive cavemen”, these were intelligent, resourceful people living in a world that creationist mythology simply cannot account for.

This discovery, and its significance for understanding the skills and ingenuity of our early ancestors, is explained in a Stockholm University news release.

World’s oldest arrow poison – 60,000-year-old traces reveal early advanced hunting techniques
Researchers have identified traces of plant poison from the South African plant gifbol on Stone Age arrowheads – the oldest known arrow poison in the world to date. The discovery, published in the scientific journal Science Advances, shows that 60,000 years ago, people in southern Africa had already developed advanced knowledge of toxic substances and how they could be used for hunting.
Researchers from South Africa and Sweden have found the oldest traces of arrow poison in the world to date. On 60,000-year-old quartz arrowheads from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, researchers have identified chemical residues of poison from the plant gifbol (Boophone disticha), a poisonous plant still used by traditional hunters in the region.

This is the result of a long and close collaboration between researchers in South Africa and Sweden. Being able to identify the world's oldest arrow poison together has been a complex undertaking and is incredibly encouraging for continued research.

Professor Sven Isaksson, lead author
Archaeological Research Laboratory
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden.

[Professor Sven Isaksson is] an expert in the analysis of organic residues in archaeological materials who carried out the chemical analyses.

Oldest evidence of arrow poison

This is the oldest direct evidence that humans used arrow poison. It shows that our ancestors in southern Africa not only invented the bow and arrow much earlier than previously thought, but also understood how to use nature’s chemistry to increase hunting efficiency.

Professor Marlize Lombard, co-author
Palaeo-Research Institute
University of Johannesburg
Johannesburg, South Africa

Chemical analyses revealed the presence of the alkaloids buphanidrine and epibuphanisine, substances found in the plant Boophone disticha – also known as gifbol (i.e. poisonous onion). The plant has long been known among local hunters for its highly toxic properties.

Similar substances were also found on 250-year-old arrowheads in Swedish collections, which were collected by travellers during the 18th century. The fact that the same plant poison was used in both historical and prehistoric times indicates a long continuity of knowledge and tradition.

Finding traces of the same poison on both prehistoric and historical arrowheads was crucial. By carefully studying the chemical structure of the substances and thus drawing conclusions about their properties, we were able to determine that these particular substances are stable enough to survive this long in the ground. It’s also fascinating that people had such a deep and long-standing understanding of the use of plants.

Professor Sven Isaksson.

Advanced planning abilities

Previously, indirect traces of poison have been used to interpret hunting practices, but the findings from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter constitute the first direct evidence of hunting with poisoned arrows. The study shows that these early hunters not only had technical skills but also advanced planning abilities and an understanding of how poisons work over time – characteristics that reflect modern human cognition.

Using arrow poison requires planning, patience and an understanding of cause and effect. It is a clear sign of advanced thinking in early humans.

Professor Anders Högberg, co-author
Department of Cultural Sciences
Linnaeus University
Sweden.

Publication:
Sven Isaksson et al.
Direct evidence for poison use on microlithic arrowheads in Southern Africa at 60,000 years ago
Sci. Adv. 12, eadz3281(2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adz3281

Abstract
Poisoned weapons are a hallmark of advanced hunter-gatherer technology. Through targeted microchemical and biomolecular analyses, we identified traces of toxic plant alkaloids on backed microliths from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, excavated from a level dated to 60,000 years ago. The alkaloids buphandrine and epibuphanisine only originate from Amaryllidaceae indigenous to southern Africa. The most likely source is Boophone disticha (L.f.) Herb. bulb exudate, also associated with historically documented arrow poisons. To our knowledge, we present the first direct evidence for the application of this plant-based poison on the tips of Pleistocene hunting weapons. The discovery highlights the complexity of subsistence strategies and cognition in southern Africa since the mid-Pleistocene.

Fig. 1. Boophone disticha (L.f.) Herb., microlithic arrowhead, and Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter.
(A) B. disticha bulb and fan-like leaves (photo credit: A. Motala, CC BY-SA, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en), (B) flowerhead (photo credit: G. Bowers-Winters, CC BY-NC, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en), and (C) seeding structure (photo credit: R. Taylor, CC BY-NC, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en). (D) An approximately 2000-year-old arrowhead from South Africa with transversely hafted microlith [(11); photo credit: by M.L.]. (E) Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter, with (F) the western profile exposed in 2018–2019, and (G) simplified stratigraphic drawing with ages in BP, the star indicating the layer from which the backed microliths were excavated [images adapted from (53), an open-source paper under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), with permission from G. Dusseldorp and I. Sifogeorgaki].

Sven Isaksson et al.
Direct evidence for poison use on microlithic arrowheads in Southern Africa at 60,000 years ago
Sci. Adv. 12, eadz3281(2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adz3281

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Discoveries like this are profoundly awkward for creationism, because they do not merely add another isolated data point to the archaeological record — they reveal a long continuity of human ingenuity stretching back tens of thousands of years. The manufacture of quartz arrowheads, the development of composite weapons, and the deliberate exploitation of plant toxins all speak to careful planning, experimentation, ecological knowledge, and cultural transmission across generations. These are not the marks of a world only a few thousand years old, populated suddenly by fully formed humans at the dawn of time. They are the unmistakable signatures of deep history.

And this is precisely what evolutionary science predicts. Modern humans did not appear out of nowhere, nor did technology arrive as a single miraculous package. Instead, the story told by archaeology is one of gradual accumulation: small innovations building on earlier ones, knowledge persisting and spreading, and human populations adapting to their environments over immense spans of time. Poisoned arrows are not an anomaly — they are part of the broader pattern of behavioural sophistication that emerges repeatedly throughout the African Middle Stone Age.

Creationists may, as ever, attempt to dismiss such evidence, or insist that the dating must somehow be wrong, or that the entire record has been fabricated or planted as a test of faith. But these excuses collapse under the sheer weight of consistency. The same deep-time chronology is supported by radiometric dating, stratigraphy, genetics, palaeontology, and now the chemical traces of ancient hunting technologies. Reality does not bend to mythology.

The quartz arrowheads of Umhlatuzana are therefore more than artefacts. They are messages from our own ancestors, written in stone and chemistry, telling us that human history is vastly older, richer, and more fascinating than any Bronze Age creation tale could ever accommodate.

The past is real — and it is far deeper than creationism can endure.

Advertisement

Amazon