Discovery in South Africa holds oldest evidence of mixing ingredients to make arrow poison

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 artefacts 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,…

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