125,000-year-old poisoned stone points discovered on shore of ancient lake in Saudi Arabia
Archaeologists have found what may be the world's oldest poisoned weapons at a 125,000-year-old site on an ancient lakeshore in Saudi Arabia.
Key points
- 12) in the journal Science, researchers investigated a 125,000-year-old site in southern Saudi Arabia known as 'Uruq Aljelibah, which means "sand dunes of a watering hole," study co-author Frans van Buchem, a geologist at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, told Live Science.
- "At 125,000 years old, these would be substantially older than the poisoned arrowheads recently identified in South Africa, which date to around 60,000 years ago," study co-author Chris Clarkson, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany and Griffith University in Australia, told Live Science in an email.
- Several of these artifacts were stone points that showed impact damage consistent with hunting large animals, and a microscopic analysis revealed traces of animal tissue near the point tips.
Several stone points had chemical residues linked with the arrow poison tree (Acokanthera schimperi), which is known historically for its toxins and is native to eastern and central Africa and southern Arabia.
Additional details
- "The idea of hippopotamuses and enormous buffalo living around a lake in what is now the Empty Quarter really brings home just how dramatically these landscapes, and global climates, have changed," Clarkson said.
- The distribution of the stone tools closely matched clusters of animal bones, suggesting that the lakeshore was a focal point for hunting and processing game, according to the study.
- So I'd describe these as potentially the oldest evidence for poisoned hunting weapons, rather than an unequivocally established first." In the new study, published Thursday (Nov.
- But the scientists found the site was once home to a freshwater lake measuring about 130 square miles (340 square kilometers) and up to 95 feet (29 meters) deep.
- The stone tools, which were likely used to hunt large animals, had traces of residue from a poisonous tree historically used for its toxins.
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