For example, the curare plant poisons used by South and Central American hunters paralyzes the respiratory system. Now, paleoarchaeologists say that a new find in South Africa indicates humans have been using poison arrows for even longer than originally thought. “This is the oldest direct evidence that humans used arrow poison,” Marlize Lombard, an archeologist at the University of Johannesburg and study co-author, explained in a statement. Those specimens, collected by 18th century travellers to South Africa, closely match the organic molecules on the 60,000-year-old discovery. According to Anders Högberg, a study co-author and archaeologist at Sweden’s Linnaeus University, arrow poison illustrates the levels of planning, artisanry, and logical cognition already exhibited by Stone Age peoples.